Judge Chutkan is Trump’s “worst nightmare” for these reasons: Ex-prosecutor

Judge Tanya Chutkan, the Washington, D.C., judge chosen to oversee Donald Trump’s criminal trial for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is the former president’s worst nightmare, one former prosecutor said on Sunday.

Trump was arraigned in a D.C. court on Thursday, pleading not guilty to the charges leveled against him in his second federal indictment, his third overall. Brought as a result of an investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and special counsel Jack Smith, the indictment against Trump includes charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights, and obstruction of an official proceeding, pertaining to his various efforts to subvert his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Chutkan, who was appointed to the Washington, D.C., district court in 2014 by former President Barack Obama, was chosen to oversee Trump’s criminal trial. Among legal experts, her presence has been deemed a major blow to Trump and a major boon for the DOJ, given her recent history of handing out some of the harshest punishments to participants in the January 6, 2021, Capital riot. Additionally, she has already denied the Trump legal team’s request for an extended deadline to respond to a protective order that could limit what the former president and his legal team can share publicly about the case.

David Henderson, a former assistant district attorney for Texas’s Bexar County turned civil rights lawyer, appeared on MSNBC on Sunday to discuss the situation surrounding Trump’s second federal indictment. During the conversation with host Ayman Mohyeldin, he echoed the sentiments surrounding Chutkan, saying that her involvement with the trial will be Trump’s worst nightmare.

“In frank terms, Ayman, she is Trump’s worst nightmare,” Henderson said. “And she’s his legal team’s worst nightmare. I’m just going to be real when I say it: a Black woman with a law degree is a virtual unstoppable force when it comes to the justice system. Here’s the reason why: taking someone who’s been subjected to two different forms of discrimination, discrimination based on gender, discrimination based on race, then you’re instructing them on the law in terms of how things are actually supposed to work, then you put them in an environment where they see people get mistreated based on who they are every single day of their career.”

He continued: “Now you’ve got somebody walking into her courtroom saying, ‘Now hold on a second, I deserve to be treated differently because I used to be a super powerful person, and I expect to become a super powerful person again,’ that is not going to work on her. Also, the techniques that he typically uses that work on people, intimidating them by talking about them in the press…someone like Judge Chutkan has been called every name you can imagine, she’s been put under every form of pressure you can imagine, it is not going to work on her.”

Newsweek reached out to Trump’s office via email for comment.