FIRST ON FOX: Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is calling on Congress to investigate Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing her of conducting her court with open bias and partisanship in handling the cases of people linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Chutkan is also the judge overseeing the U.S. government’s case against former President Trump for allegedly attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Before that, she made headlines for dealing out sentences to members of the Jan. 6 crowd that were higher than those recommended by federal prosecutors. In his resolution, Gaetz also accused her of supporting the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, some of which were violent, while at the same time openly criticizing the Capitol riot.
He’s introducing a resolution in the House to both censure Chutkan and direct the House Judiciary Committee to probe her conduct.
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Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is introducing a resolution to censure U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
“It is deeply concerning to see a United States District Court judge show such blatant impropriety from the bench,” Gaetz told Fox News Digital. “Judge Tanya Chutkan’s impracticality of her tough sentencing of Jan. 6th defendants, despite openly supporting the violent Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, showcases not only a lack of impartiality but also a disregard for the sacred duty of a judge to uphold justice fairly.”
One of the instances that Gaetz’s resolution zeroes in on is an Oct. 4, 2021, sentencing hearing during which Chutkan disagreed with a comparison made between the Capitol riot and the protests after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
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Chutkan is overseeing former President Trump’s case over 2020 election interference. (U.S. Marshals Service)
“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man … to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy,” Gaetz cited Chutkan as saying.
Fox News Digital reached out to the D.C. court for comment but did not immediately hear back.
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Gaetz also said the man she was sentencing at the time, Matthew Mazzocco, “was a nonviolent offender who spent merely 12 minutes on Capitol grounds and who urged others to remain peaceful on January 6, 2021,” according to the resolution text. Chutkan had sentenced Mazzocco to 45 days in jail over the misdemeanor charge.
Chutkan is known for dealing out harsh sentences to Jan. 6 rioters. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez/File)
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Trump and his allies in Congress and elsewhere have accused Chutkan of behaving politically as the former president continues to deny guilt in all of the four criminal indictments against him. They have lodged similar accusations against Special Counsel Jack Smith and Biden administration officials in the Justice Department.
Tensions around the case are flaring; a Texas woman was arrested recently for threatening to kill Chutkan if Trump was not reelected in 2024, according to multiple reports.
