Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is confident that the federal judge assigned to former President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 case will be “relentlessly hostile” to him.
During the Aug. 2 episode of his “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast, the senator said that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has “a reputation for being far-left, even by D.C. District Court standards.”
The judge, he noted, has set aside multiple federal death penalty cases and is the only federal judge to have issued harsher sentences for Jan. 6 defendants than Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors requested.
“We can anticipate a judge who is going to be relentlessly hostile to Donald Trump, who is going to bend over backwards for the Biden DOJ, and who is going to make ruling after ruling after ruling against Trump,” Mr. Cruz said.
A former assistant public defender, Judge Chutkan was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate—including Mr. Cruz—in June 2014. She was assigned to Mr. Trump’s case earlier this week after he was indicted by a federal grand jury over his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
But in addition to his concerns about the judge, Mr. Cruz also expressed doubt as to the impartiality of a jury selected in Washington.
Describing the area as “the most Democrat” jurisdiction in the country, he said: “The likelihood that a D.C. jury will vote to convict Donald Trump is exceptionally high. And the facts don’t matter; the laws don’t matter; they hate him.”
Given the judge’s record and the location of the jury, the senator said it was a “very real possibility” that Mr. Trump would be convicted. However, Mr. Cruz added that any conviction would likely be reversed later by the Supreme Court.
Indictment
The latest indictment marks the third criminal case against the 45th president. At the federal level, Mr. Trump is also facing charges over his handling of classified documents. In New York, he stands accused of falsifying business records in relation to hush money payments made during the 2016 election cycle.
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