The judge assigned to former President Donald Trump for the case involving his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election has defended rioters from protests in the summer of 2020 from comparisons to rioters at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.
Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said comparing the actions of rioters who caused chaos in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd to rioters who interrupted the special session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, was a “false equivalency.”
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“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent,” Chutkan said in a hearing in October 2021, per Politico. “But 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.”
Riots in the aftermath of Floyd’s May 2020 death resulted in several deaths and injuries, curfews in most cities across the country, and an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion in property damage. The Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, affected the Washington area, causing an estimated $2.73 million in damage, the death of one rioter, and injuries to several others.
Chutkan, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, has a record of handing down some of the lengthiest sentences to defendants who were implicated in the Capitol riot. Records also indicate Chutkan was a donor to Obama and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).
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Trump was indicted on four counts — conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights — by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith.
The former president is scheduled to appear before Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya at a courthouse in Washington on Thursday at 4 p.m.
