It would be an overstatement to say Donald Trump has never lashed out publicly at a judge before. We know for certain that he’s done exactly that more than once, making racist comments about U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel in 2016, and more recently, slamming U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan and Judge Arthur Engoron in New York.
In those earlier instances, however, the Republican had civil matters before the jurists. Conditions are far different for the former president now that he’s under indictment. As Politico reported this morning:
Donald Trump slammed the judge presiding over his newest criminal case early Monday, testing her three-day-old warning that he refrain from “inflammatory” attacks against those involved in his case.
The first sign of trouble came about a week ago, when the former president used his social media platform to argue, “THERE IS NO WAY I CAN GET A FAIR TRIAL WITH THE JUDGE ‘ASSIGNED.’” He never got around to saying why he had a problem with U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, but by all appearances, he was trying to score political points, not make an argument based on merit.
Earlier this morning, however, Trump’s offensive intensified, pointing to Chutkan’s comments during the sentencing of a Jan. 6 rioter. The judge’s comments were hardly outlandish — they were, in fact, accurate and fair — but the Republican nevertheless told the public that Chutkan is “VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!”
A day earlier, Trump also promoted a related message from someone who insisted that Chutkan “openly admitted she’s running election interference against Trump.” In reality, the judge said no such thing, and the person making the claim — a Republican named Mike Davis — used to work for a Republican senator who voted to confirm Chutkan to the federal bench.
At face value, it’s obviously difficult to defend Trump trying to smear a judge who’s done nothing wrong, but in this instance, that’s only a small part of a larger problem.
Unlike the earlier civil cases in which Trump lashed out at judges, the former president is now a suspected felon facing federal criminal charges. With this in mind, it was just last week when Chutkan provided defense counsel with some rather important instructions. From the aforementioned Politico report: During a hearing Friday, Chutkan — appointed to the bench in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama after a unanimous confirmation in the Senate — repeatedly emphasized she would not consider politics in her courtroom during Trump’s proceedings. And she warned Trump, who has a history of publicly assailing judges, prosecutors and those arrayed against him as witnesses, that his inflammatory remarks could force her to speed up his criminal trial.
Perhaps Trump didn’t understand those instructions. Maybe he heard them and decided he simply didn’t care. Or perhaps the indicted former president is trying to test the limits of what he can get away with. Whatever his motivation, it would appear Trump has set up a collision course with the judge overseeing one of his most important criminal cases. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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