Donald Trump shared a post on Truth Social on Sunday afternoon attacking the judge overseeing a case brought against the former president over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The judge, Tanya Chutkan, has previously warned Trump about trying to intimidate witnesses and government officials prosecuting the case, though it’s not clear whether the former president will suffer any consequences for his most recent social media attack.
“Judge Tanya Chutkan—an Obama leftwing activist judge in DC, whose husband also got appointed by Obama as a DC judge—openly admitted she’s running election interference against Trump,” the statement posted to Truth Social on Sunday reads.
The message from Trump is a screenshot of a tweet that originated on Twitter, which recently changed its name to X. The original tweet was shared by Mike Davis, a right-wing political activist, and includes a photo of the judge.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan warned Trump’s attorneys on Friday that she would not tolerate a “carnival atmosphere” in her court and noted that Trump has previously tried to intimidate witnesses through his use of social media. Trump started the Truth Social platform in 2022 after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter. And though both services have officially invited Trump back, he’s staying on Truth Social, which is likely a strategic move to make sure he can’t be silenced in the event of another coup attempt.
Chutkan is presiding over a federal case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith, who alleges Trump tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election through a number of different avenues. After Trump lost the 2020 election, he asked his vice president, Mike Pence, to refuse to certify the 2020 results, something no vice president in history has attempted to do. When Pence refused, Trump staged a rally on January 6, 2021 in an effort to interrupt the counting of the votes at the U.S. Capitol—an insurrection that ultimately failed.
Before the coup attempt, Trump was also caught on tape asking election officials in Georgia to “find” enough votes, which would deliver the state’s 16 electoral votes to him.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said on the phone call, which is shocking in its straightforward criminality.
Prosecutors in Georgia are reportedly getting ready to bring their own state charges against Trump in that case as soon as this week. Extra security has been set up around the courthouse in Fulton County, Georgia in preparation for a new indictment.
The prosecution in the election interference case reportedly has 11.6 million “pages or files” related to the case, which will need to be shared with Trump’s attorneys very soon, assuming they haven’t been already.
While Trump insists the election interference case against him is about the First Amendment, both the indictment and Judge Chutkan have explained it has nothing to do with free speech. Trump is being charged with a criminal conspiracy to subvert democracy, not with questioning the 2020 election results.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges brought against him, even though he’s given conflicting stories to the public about what really happened. In the federal case over Trump’s retention of classified documents, the former president has sometimes said he did have the documents and had every right to have them. Other times, Trump has denied having the documents at all, insisting that audio we could all hear—where he talked about having the secret documents in his hand—was really just about newspaper articles.
Only time will tell whether people decide to believe Trump or the numerous law enforcement officials who continually suggest the 45th president is a clear threat to the safety and security of the United States.
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