The latest federal indictment brought against former President Donald Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith will be presided over by Washington D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is alleged to be politically biased against Trump, to say nothing of the undeniable overt partisan bias of D.C. residents who will fill the prospective jury pool.
However, in the immediate wake of that indictment last week, Trump's civil attorney and legal spokeswoman, Alina Habba, struck a somewhat positive note as she downplayed the severity of those particular concerns, according to the Conservative Brief.
Instead, she seemed to suggest that Judge Chutkan may be compelled to recuse herself from the case once her alleged biases and conflicts of interest were fully exposed to the American public.
The New York Post reported last week that Judge Chutkan, who was appointed to her current role as a federal judge in D.C. by President Barack Obama in 2014, has developed a reputation over the past two years as being among the "toughest" in terms of her handling of criminal cases linked to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot of 2021.
That includes often harshly sentencing Trump supporter defendants above and beyond what even the overzealous anti-Trump federal prosecutors have requested.
It was also revealed that prior to her ascension to the federal bench, Chutkan worked as a lawyer for a dozen years at the prominent Democrat-linked law firm of Boies Schiller, the same law firm that President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden worked at for the last five of those years, though it is unknown if Chutkan and Biden ever worked together or even were acquainted with each other while working concurrently at the firm.
Just one day after that Post article about Judge Chutkan, Trump's attorney Habba appeared on Newsmax with host Rob Schmitt, who began their segment by playing a video clip of comments from former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova, a staunch supporter of former President Trump who expressed his grave concerns with regard to Trump's poor chances for success before the hostile judge and potentially even more hostile D.C. jury pool.
"You know, there are processes we can go through if we do believe that this judge is compromised or won't be able to give a fair shake. It's a motion for recusal," Habba said. "The only issue with recusal motions -- and I'm not familiar with the criminal court system -- but in civil law, the judge decides whether they can be impartial.
"That's how it works in the civil court, so we'll see how it works. I'll leave that to our criminal attorneys, but that's typically what you do," she continued. "But I can't see how you could possibly be a person who donates the Democratic Party, a person who sat on the board with the current president and political opponent to President Trump's and then sit and oversee this case. That just doesn't make sense to me."
As for the beliefs of diGenova and others that Trump's D.C. case is a "lost cause," given the judge and jury in that district, Habba downplayed those concerns and replied, "I don't necessarily believe that, and maybe that's only because I'm a product of a little bit more internal knowledge."
Trump's civil lawyer Habba went on to reference a recent case they had won with regard to "presidential immunity" that was largely overlooked by the media, and suggested that such immunity for sitting presidents -- which Trump was at the time of the charged events in Special Counsel Smith's indictment -- protected him from legal repercussions for anything he may have said, including provably false statements.
"He truly did believe the election had deficiencies, and we know that, and there are people that did, so they're gonna have a hard time with this one, even in D.C.," she continued, and further noted that Trump was receiving often differing advice from "multiple attorneys" while in the Oval Office, making it even more difficult to prove that Trump somehow knew his claims about the election were untrue.
"So I'm not as concerned based on the facts," Habba added with respect to the case and the judge. "Am I concerned about a D.C. jury? Of course, nobody can get in front of a D.C. jury as a Republican."
