Washington (AFP) - The judge who is to preside over possibly the most significant trial in American history -- USA vs Donald Trump -- has already handed down some of the stiffest sentences in cases involving participants in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan also has a legal history with Trump -- she ruled against him in a November 2021 case, notably declaring that "presidents are not kings."
The 61-year-old Chutkan has been assigned to oversee the historic trial of the 45th US president on charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
Chutkan, one of a dozen judges on the Washington federal district court bench, was randomly assigned to the case.
Chutkan and Trump crossed paths two years ago when the former president filed suit asserting executive privilege to block documents from being handed over to a congressional committee investigating the attack on the Capitol by his supporters.
Trump was no longer president at the time and Chutkan, in her ruling, rejected the suit saying his argument "appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power 'exists in perpetuity.'"
"But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President," Chutkan wrote.
Some of the White House records and files that Chutkan ordered released were used as evidence in the 45-page criminal indictment filed against Trump on Tuesday by special counsel Jack Smith.
Prosecutions stemming from the attack on the Capitol have taken place in the nation's capital, and Chutkan has presided over nearly three dozen cases, handing out some of the harshest sentences.
In December 2021, Chutkan sentenced a Trump supporter to five years in prison for assaulting police officers at the Capitol -- a sentence that was the stiffest to have been meted out at that time.
"It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort, is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment," Chutkan said at sentencing.
Confirmed 95-0
According to a Washington Post tally, Chutkan, as of mid-June, had sentenced all 31 defendants who have come before her to at least some prison time, tacking on stiffer sentences in nine cases.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is to appear before a different judge in Washington on Thursday to enter a plea to the charges. The case will then be handed over to Chutkan.
The Kingston, Jamaica-born Chutkan was nominated to become a US District Court judge by former president Barack Obama.
She was confirmed unanimously -- 95-0 by the US Senate in June 2014.
According to her official biography, Chutkan received an undergraduate degree in economics from George Washington University and her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a prestigious Ivy League institution.
After three years in private practice, she joined the public defenders office in Washington, where she spent the next 11 years and tried more than 30 cases.
She then joined the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, where she spent 12 years and rose to the ranks of partner, specializing in white collar criminal defense.
