U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan today told the entire world just who is in charge of Donald J. Trump’s life.
For starters, it is not Donald J. Trump. That role now falls on a jurist who was selected randomly to preside over a trial involving charges that the former POTUS conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Chutkan reportedly doesn’t suffer fools at all, let alone lightly. She delivered a ruling today that is both fair and it tells the criminal defendant, Trump, that he needs to cease hiding behind a “free speech” argument in his defense. He is free to say the 2020 election was rigged, she said, but he is not free to issue veiled threats against the prosecutors, jurors or the judge.
Chutkan told Trump that free speech is not “absolute” and that criminal defendants — such as Trump — have limits on statements they can make.
Thus, we have just received a sterling civic lesson on how an individual who prides himself on being “in charge” of all he sees, who once boasted that “I, alone” can fix the nation’s ailments, is now beholden to a federal judge.
Therein lies the wisdom of the founders who created a federal judiciary that has the authority to keep anyone — even a former president — on a short rhetorical leash.