Trump targets Judge Tanya Chutkan in federal election case, claims she ‘wants me behind bars’

Former President Donald Trump kicked off the week of his expected fourth indictment by convicting the judge overseeing the federal case of illegally conspiring to sabotage the results of the 2020 election.

In a pair of social media posts shortly after midnight Monday, Trump attacked US District Judge Tanya Chutkan as “extremely partisan” and “extremely biased and unfair!”

“She obviously wants me behind bars,” Trump wrote on the Truth Social at 1:14 a.m. ET.

This post was made in reference to Shotkan’s statements from an October hearing for Christine Priola, one of hundreds of people facing a felon. fees Related to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Chutkan said, according to Chutkan: text from the hearing. “It is blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”

Trump posted this quote in all caps less than an hour after midnight.

Later Monday morning, Trump vented his anger at the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia is expected To bring the statewide election interference case to a grand jury this week. Trump even targeted former Georgia governor Jeff Duncan, a potential witness, as a “loser” and said he shouldn’t Witness before the grand jury.

Several legal experts told CNBC they expect Trump to face a gag order as he continues to lash out against a constellation of figures related to his expanding legal troubles.

The Capitol riot, carried out by violent pro-Trump crowds who believed his false claims of a “rigged” election, was central to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s second federal case against Trump. The former president appeared in US District Court in Washington, D.C., earlier this month to stand trial on the four-count indictment accusing him of trying to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden.

Trump’s latest attack is against Chutkan, who has earned a reputation for giving harsh the January 6 verdicts in related cases, escalating his already aggressive commentary about criminal proceedings. Trump had earlier claimed there was “no way to get a fair trial” before Chutkan and said he would seek a new judge and venue for the case.

The latest posts came three days after it issued a protective order limiting the evidence Trump could share in the election interference case. Chutkan granted a request by Trump’s lawyers for a narrower order of protection than federal prosecutors proposed, though it did give the Justice Department a say in the specific parameters of the order.

At that hearing, Chutkan warned Trump and his legal team not to publish anything that might affect the integrity of the case. “Even vague statements made by the parties or their counsel, if they could reasonably be interpreted to intimidate witnesses or harm prospective jurors, can threaten the process,” she said.

However, Trump launched a social media blitz over the weekend decrying his case and other legal troubles.

He posted a post on Sunday that included a photo of Chutkan and described her as “a left-wing activist judge for Obama in D.C. Her husband has also been appointed by Obama to be a judge in Washington.”

That post alleged that Chutkan had “explicitly admitted to running election interference against Trump.” She pointed to the judge’s quote from Friday’s protection order hearing that Trump’s presidential campaign cannot take precedence over his criminal case. “If that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about the witnesses in this case, then that’s the way it should be,” she said.

On Friday evening, Trump posted a dossier connection to a blog post on a conservative website that promoted the idea that Chutkan should step down in the case.