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Trump’s judge isn’t the only DC justice to give longer-than-requested sentences to Jan. 6 rioters [1]
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Date: 2023-08-04 22:52:37.293000
CLAIM: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has been assigned to the most recent case against former President Donald Trump, is the only federal judge in Washington, D.C. who has given Jan. 6 defendants sentences that are longer than those requested by the Justice Department.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Although Chutkan is among the toughest punishers of rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, she is not the only judge who has exceeded recommended sentences in cases related to the attack. Judges Royce Lamberth and Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, for example, are among those who have also handed down harsher sentences, according to Justice Department records.
THE FACTS: Chutkan’s sentencing record has been in the spotlight in the days since she was assigned to Trump’s case, especially in cases involving the Jan. 6 insurrection. But some on social media are exaggerating how harsh the Obama appointee has been on the rioters compared to other judges.
“Chutkan, an Obama appointee, is the only federal judge in Washington, D.C., who has sentenced Jan. 6 defendants to sentences longer than the government had requested,” reads one tweet that had received more than 11,800 likes and more than 6,000 shares as of Friday.
Chutkan has certainly been one of the tougher judges in Jan. 6 cases.
One of two dozen judges in Washington, D.C. who collectively have sentenced nearly 600 defendants for their roles in the siege, Chutkan has matched or exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations in 19 of her 38 sentences, the AP has reported. In four of those cases, prosecutors weren’t seeking any jail time at all.
An AP analysis of Jan. 6 sentences published in June 2022, when nearly 200 had been handed down, found she was the only judge to have exceeded prosecutors’ recommended punishments in most of the cases assigned to them.
But that doesn’t mean that other judges have never gone above the recommendations, as Justice Department records show.
For example, prosecutors recommended that Duke Edward Wilson, a 68-year-old logger from Idaho who hit a Capitol Police officer with a PVC pipe, be sentenced to 46 months in prison. But Lamberth gave him 51 months — the maximum allowed under federal sentencing guidelines.
Kollar-Kotelly sentenced Jerry Ryals, a 27-year-old from Oklahoma who illegally walked through or stayed in several areas of the Capitol building after being told to go outside, to nine months incarceration. The Justice Department only recommended six.
More than 1,000 people across the U.S. have been charged in the Jan. 6 riot.
Trump pleaded not guilty in federal court on Thursday to four charges related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He was indicted on Tuesday by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
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[1] Url:
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-tanya-chutkan-trump-judge-sentences-jan-6-303560556517
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