A motion filed by Donald Trump's legal team several weeks ago asking for Judge Tanya Chutkan to recuse herself from presiding over his election interference case has been denied.
The motion had been filed on the basis that previous comments made by Chutkan led Trump to worry as to whether she would be "fair" in the case, but the judge shot those fears down in her decision on the matter.
In Wednesday's court filing, Chutkan said that "her comments during sentencing hearings for two defendants who took part in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 — which Trump and his lawyers cited in his attempt to remove her from the case — do not warrant recusal," per CBS News.
"The statements certainly do not manifest a deep-seated prejudice that would make fair judgment impossible — the standard for recusal based on statements with intrajudicial origins," Chutkan wrote.
In earlier reporting by Salon, the comments found worrisome by Trump's legal team were identified as such:
During one of these hearings, which took place in October 2022, Chutkan told the defendant that the people who "mobbed" the Capitol on Jan. 6 showed "blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day." In another hearing, in December 2021, Chutkan told a defendant that the "people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged."
As AP News points out in their coverage of the denial, "There's a high bar for recusal, and legal experts had widely considered Trump's request to be a long shot aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the case publicly that could only sour the relationship between the judge and the defense in court."
