Tanya Chutkan | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia | |
Assumed office June 5, 2014 | |
Appointed by | Barack Obama |
Preceded by | Seat established |
Personal details | |
Born | Tanya Sue Chutkan July 5,1962 Kingston,Jamaica |
Spouse | Peter A. Krauthamer |
Children | 2 |
Education | George Washington University (BA) University of Pennsylvania (JD) |
Tanya Sue Chutkan (born July 5,1962) is a Jamaican-born American lawyer and jurist serving as a U.S. district judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She is the presiding judge over the criminal trial of former U.S. president Donald Trump over his attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election,including the events leading up to the January 6,2021,United States Capitol attack.
Chutkan was born on July 5,1962,in Kingston,Jamaica. [1] Chutkan has a younger brother,Norman,and a younger sister,Robynne,both of whom are physicians. Her father Winston Chutkan is an Indo-Jamaican doctor,and her mother Noelle is an Afro-Jamaican who was one of the leading dancers at the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. [2] [3] [4] Noelle is the daughter of Frank Hill,one of the founding fathers of the People's National Party.[ citation needed ] Through her mother,Chutkan is a cousin of former Liverpool and England footballer John Barnes. [5] [6]
Chutkan received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1983 from George Washington University. She later attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School,where she was an associate editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review . She graduated in 1987 with a Juris Doctor. [7]
From 1987 to 1990,Chutkan was in private practice at the law firm Hogan &Hartson (now Hogan Lovells). From 1990 to 1991,she worked at the law firm of Donovan,Leisure,Rogovin,Huge &Schiller. From 1991 to 2002,she was a trial attorney and supervisor at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. In 2002,Chutkan joined the law firm of Boies,Schiller &Flexner,becoming a partner in 2007. Her practice focused on complex civil litigation and specifically antitrust class action cases. [8] [9]
On December 19,2013,President Barack Obama nominated Chutkan as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to a seat created pursuant to 104 Stat. 5089. [10] [11] She received a hearing before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on February 25,2014. [12] On March 27,2014,her nomination was reported out of committee by a voice vote. [13] On June 3,2014,the United States Senate invoked cloture on her nomination by a 54–40 vote. [14] On June 4,2014,her nomination was confirmed by a 95–0 vote. [15] She received her judicial commission on June 5,2014. [9]
In February 2017,Public.Resource.Org was sued by the American Society for Testing and Materials,the National Fire Protection Association,the American Society of Heating,Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers,and other entities for scanning and making available building codes and fire codes which these organizations consider their copyrighted property. [16] [17] Chutkan ruled against Public.Resource.Org,ordering all of the standards to be deleted from the Internet. [18] Public.Resource.Org appealed her ruling to the D.C. Circuit,which reversed and remanded her decision in 2018,holding that the fair use doctrines had been improperly applied. [19] In March 2022,Chutkan issued a new ruling that would allow Public.Resource.Org to reproduce 184 standards under fair use,partially reproduce 1 standard,and deny reproduction of 32 standards that were found to differ in substantive ways from those incorporated by law; [20] ASTM et al. has since appealed again to the D.C. Circuit. [21]
In summer 2017,Chutkan presided over the Imran Awan and Hina Alvi fraud case. [22] [23]
In Garza v. Hargan (2017),Chutkan ordered the Office of Refugee Resettlement to allow a girl in its care to have an abortion. [24] That ruling was vacated by a panel of the D.C. Circuit,reinstated by the full en banc D.C. Circuit,and ultimately mooted by the U.S. Supreme Court. [25] In December 2017,Chutkan granted relief to two additional pregnant minors who sued seeking access to abortion services while in ORR custody. [26] In March 2018,Chutkan certified a class action and ordered ORR to provide access to abortions to all minors in their custody. [27]
On June 8,2018,Chutkan blocked until June 20 the release in Syrian Democratic Forces-controlled territory of a dual-nationality Saudi-American citizen alleged to have joined ISIL. The man,who is now held for nine months in Iraq,was planned to be released by the U.S. military –with a new cell phone,some food and water and $4,210 in cash,and his Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) identification card,as soon as the next day. [28] [29]
On March 7,2019,Chutkan ruled that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos illegally delayed the implementation of the "Equity in IDEA" regulations. These regulations updated how states calculate racial disparities in the identification of children as being eligible for special education,the placement of children in restrictive classroom settings,and the use exclusionary discipline. Chutkan also ruled that the U.S. Department of Education violated the law concerning the spread of regulations by neglecting to provide a "reasoned explanation" for the delay,and failing to account for the costs that child,parents,and society would bear. [30]
On April 26,2019,Chutkan sentenced Maria Butina to 18 months in prison for conspiring to be an unregistered agent of the Russian government in the United States. [31] [32]
On November 20,2019,Chutkan issued a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Department of Justice,finding that federal inmates sentenced to death were likely to succeed in arguing that the federal government's new lethal injection procedure —which uses a single drug,pentobarbital,rather than the three-drug combination previously in place —“exceeds statutory authority" under the Federal Death Penalty Act. [33] Chutkan's order was later reversed by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, [34] and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. [35] The reversal of the injunction was upheld and thirteen federal inmates were executed. [36]
On November 9,2021,Chutkan denied former President Donald Trump's motion to keep records from being released to the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6,2021. [37] [38] The D.C. Circuit affirmed that decision,and the U.S. Supreme Court declined review. [39]
Chutkan has overseen the trials of more than 30 defendants in cases related to the January 6 Capitol attack. According to The Washington Post ,she has been the toughest sentencing judge in those cases,ordering at least some jail or prison time in all cases,and sometimes exceeding the sentence recommended by prosecutors. [40]
As of August 1,2023,Chutkan is the judge overseeing Trump's criminal trial over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,culminating in the events leading up to the January 6 Capitol attack. [41]
Her ex-husband, [42] Peter A. Krauthamer,served as a judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 2012 to 2023. They have two sons. [43]
Chutkan donated $1,500 to Barack Obama's campaign between 2008 and 2009. [44]
David Ryan Stras is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He is a former Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Emmet Gael Sullivan is an American attorney and jurist serving as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Brett Michael Kavanaugh is an American lawyer and jurist serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on July 9,2018,and has served since October 6,2018. He was previously a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Amul Roger Thapar is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He previously served as a U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky from 2008 to 2017 and as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky from 2006 to 2008. Thapar was President Donald Trump's first Court of Appeals appointment and Trump's second judicial appointment after Justice Neil Gorsuch. Thapar was discussed as a candidate for the Supreme Court of the United States.
U.S. President Barack Obama nominated over 400 individuals for federal judgeships during his presidency. Of these nominations,Congress confirmed 329 judgeships,173 during the 111th &112th Congresses and 156 during the 113th and 114th Congresses.
Carlton Wayne Reeves is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi and chair of the United States Sentencing Commission.
Luis Felipe Restrepo,known commonly as L. Felipe Restrepo,is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the United States Sentencing Commission.
Rossie David Alston Jr. is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He was formerly a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia after having previously been a judge in the Prince William County Circuit Court and the Prince William County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.
Neomi Jehangir Rao is an American jurist who serves as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019,having served in the Trump Administration from 2017 to 2019 as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
John Kenneth Bush is an American attorney and United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Bush graduated from Harvard Law School and practiced in Washington,D.C.,and Louisville,Kentucky,where he served as president of the local branch of the Federalist Society. In 2017,he was nominated to a seat on the Sixth Circuit by President Donald Trump.
Claria Denise Horn Boom is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. She is a member of the United States Sentencing Commission.
Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk ( 1977) is a United States district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He was nominated to the position by President Donald Trump in 2017 and sworn in for the position in 2019. In 2023,he presided over a lawsuit regarding the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s approval of abortion medication mifepristone in 2000,and had issued a preliminary ruling suspending the approval of the drug,marking the first time a court tried to invalidate the approval of a drug over the FDA's objection.
James Chiun-Yue Ho is a Taiwanese-born American attorney and jurist. He was nominated to serve as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by President Donald Trump,and took office in 2018. Ho formerly served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2008 to 2010.
Garza v. Hargan is a case before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit regarding a juvenile undocumented immigrant in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement who sought to have an abortion.
Donald Trump,President of the United States from 2017 to 2021,entered office with a significant number of judicial vacancies,including a Supreme Court vacancy due to the death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016. During the first eight months of his presidency,he nominated approximately 50 judges,a significantly higher number than any other recent president had made by that point in his presidency. By June 24,2020,200 of his Article III nominees had been confirmed by the United States Senate. According to multiple media outlets,Trump significantly impacted the composition of the Supreme Court and lower courts during his tenure.
Andrew Lynn Brasher is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. He is a former solicitor general of Alabama.
Julius Ness "Jay" Richardson is an American judge and lawyer who serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He was formerly an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of South Carolina.
Daniel Lewis Lee was an American white supremacist,neo-Nazi,and convicted felon. In 1999,Lee was convicted as an accomplice to Chevie Kehoe in the 1996 murders of William Frederick Mueller,Nancy Ann Mueller,and their daughter,Sarah Elizabeth Powell,during a robbery at their Arkansas home. The murders were committed as part of a plot to establish a white ethnostate. While Kehoe was found guilty of the triple murder in a separate trial and was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole,Lee was sentenced to death. Lee had previously served prison time for assisting his cousin in the 1990 murder of Joey Wavra.
This is a timeline of events from 2020 to 2022 related to investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections,both before and after July 2016,until November 8,2016,election day,the transition,the first and second halves of 2017,the first and second halves of 2018,and the first and second halves of 2019.
United States of America v. Donald J. Trump is a pending federal criminal case against Donald Trump,the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021,regarding his alleged participation in attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election including his involvement in the January 6 Capitol attack.
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan ordered the 18-month sentence and said Butina would receive credit for the roughly nine months she has already served.