Courtroom sketch depicting Judge Tanya Chutkan in an exchange with Donald Trump’s lawyers.
Donald Trump on Friday called the judge presiding over his criminal election interference case in Washington, D.C., “the most evil person” for ordering the release of nearly 1,900 pages of previously sealed documents filed by prosecutors.
Trump suggested U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan made the files public to harm the Republican presidential nominee’s chances in November’s election.
“Now, it’s a terrible thing, what’s happening and the judge is, this judge is the most evil person,” Trump said on Dan Bongino’s podcast.
“What judge would say ‘we’re going to release something, you know, a couple of days before?’ ” the former president asked.
Trump said “it’s not even believable” that Chutkan had made public the filings by special counsel Jack Smith, whom he called “a sick puppy.”
“They’re going to release something else, and always before the election,” Trump said. “You know, they want to do it before the election. So election interference.”
Smith has charged Trump with crimes related to his attempts to undo his loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
In an order Thursday, Chutkan rejected the argument by Trump’s lawyers that the documents should be released after November’s presidential election, where the Republican faces Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, the current vice president.
Trump’s attorneys contended that unsealing the records beforehand could be seen as election interference.
But Chutkan wrote that, on the contrary, the delay Trump was asking for, by itself, “risks undermining that public interest.”
“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute — or appear to be election interference,” Chutkan wrote.
Chutkan in a previous order had written that Trump “repeatedly accuses the Government of bad-faith partisan bias.
“These accusations, for which Defendant provides no support, continue a pattern of defense filings focusing on political rhetoric rather than addressing the legal issues at hand,” the judge wrote. “Not only is that focus unresponsive and unhelpful to the court, but it is also unbefitting of experienced defense counsel and undermining of the judicial proceedings in this case.”
Trump’s lawyer John Lauro had no immediate comment on Trump’s characterization of the judge.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for Smith, declined to comment.
Smith’s office, in a filing responding to Trump’s lawyers about proposed redactions to the documents being released, wrote, “The defendant’s opposition includes his standard and unsupported refrain that the Government’s position is motivated by improper political considerations.”
“That allegation is false — just as it was false when the Court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss the case on grounds of selective and vindictive prosecution,” prosecutors wrote.
Trump’s comments Friday about Chutkan came a year after the judge imposed a limited gag order in the case that barred him and other “interested parties … from making any public statements, or directing others to make any public statements, that target” Smith or his staff, defense lawyers, or “any of this court’s staff or other supporting personnel.”
“Defendant’s presidential candidacy cannot excuse statements that would otherwise intolerably jeopardize these proceedings,” Chutkan wrote in that order.
The gag order did not bar Trump from making comments about Chutkan herself.
A federal appeals court in December upheld that gag order, but narrowed its conditions, ruling that Trump should not be barred from making comments about Smith personally.
