Donald Trump will ask for the judge overseeing the case involving his attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election to recuse herself and will seek a venue change, he wrote on social media Sunday. “There is no way I can get a fair trial with the judge ‘assigned’ to the ridiculous freedom of speech/fair elections case. Everybody knows this, and so does she!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We will be immediately asking for recusal of this judge on very powerful grounds, and likewise for venue change, out [of] D.C.” Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was appointed by former President Obama and confirmed by the Senate 95-0, has delivered some of the harshest sentences to Jan. 6 defendants, Politico reports. She has avoided some of the most pointed criticisms of Trump that some of her colleagues on the federal bench have delivered in sentencing defendants involved in the Capitol riot.
Trump previously wrote that a fair trial would be “impossible” in D.C., suggesting the proceedings should take place in “the politically unbiased nearby State of West Virginia!” In the post, he described D.C. as “over 95% anti-Trump.” In 2020, 92% of D.C. voters favored Joe Biden. Trump’s argument has been repeatedly rejected by federal judges in D.C. Dozens of Jan. 6 defendants have attempted to transfer their cases outside of Washington, D.C., claiming the city’s liberal lean makes it impossible to secure a fair trial for those who are almost uniformly Trump supporters. Judges say the city is large and diverse enough that the presumption 12 impartial jurors could not be found is far-fetched. Jurors are selected after a “voir dire” process that includes intensive questioning by the lawyers and the judge, a system intended to weed out jurors who might have an impermissible bias or be unwilling to set aside political views to judge a case based on evidence and facts..
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