At her first hearing overseeing the 2020 election obstruction case against former president Donald Trump, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan tried to draw a line in the sand: “I intend to keep politics out of this.”
Legal experts say that will be a tricky — perhaps impossible — task, especially in a criminal prosecution in which politicians or their aides are the alleged perpetrators, witnesses and victims, and the defendant is running for president.
On Monday, a state court judge in Atlanta issued strict limits on Trump’s public statements as conditions of his release on election-related charges there. But policing and enforcing those kinds of rules will be a challenge for judges in many jurisdictions, including Chutkan, who is presiding over the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith in Washington.
“It’s right and good that Judge Chutkan is making it clear that she’s not going to focus on politics. That’s a very no-nonsense federal judge thing to say,” said Kenneth White, a former federal prosecutor in California who specializes in free-speech issues. “But even if she’d like this to be completely divorced from politics, it can’t be. It’s steeped in politics.”