Let’s be honest: Trump probably won’t get a fair trial in DC
Hudson Crozier
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As he stands accused of illegally trying to thwart the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump wants his federal trial to be moved out of “anti-Trump” Washington, D.C. One does not have to be sympathetic to the man to see that he has a point.
It will certainly be difficult to find impartial jurors no matter what, but the capital is one of the worst places in the country to look. Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, whose administration is prosecuting Trump, each won over 92% of Washington’s vote in presidential elections. The city is jam-packed with people invested in politics and advocacy, and last year’s voting rates suggest that involvement is increasing.
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Residents already have loaded opinions about the person and events central to this case. By July 2017, almost one-third of the city’s population had marched in protest of Trump. Perhaps more disturbing are residents’ exaggerated views of the Capitol attack, as shown by a survey taken during a Jan. 6 defendant’s trial.
Seventy-three percent agreed that “any individual who was inside the [U.S.] Capitol on January 6, 2021 should be convicted of insurrection.” None of them have even been charged with the crime. Sixty-four percent believed nonviolent offenders in the Capitol should be “held responsible for other people’s acts of vandalism and/or violence.” That could easily translate to agreement with the Justice Department’s claim that Trump “exploited” the riot, whether provable or not.
It is doubtful that Judge Tanya Chutkan will care as she presides over Trump’s case. Like other judges, the Obama appointee has refused to relocate Jan. 6 trials. “In any U.S. jurisdiction, most prospective jurors will have heard about the events of January 6, and many will have various disqualifying biases,” she claimed last year.
That has nothing to do with how much they know or care. Eighty percent of Democrats paid attention to the House’s Jan. 6 committee hearings compared to just 55% of independents and 44% of Republicans, according to a Marist poll. Washington’s liberal crowd will not view Trump, the king of the “insurrectionists,” dispassionately.
This venue can hardly be trusted even with a less politically significant trial than Trump’s will be. Former Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann comes to mind.
While working to push the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, Sussmann lied to the FBI about his ties to the Clinton campaign. Text messages and FBI testimony made this completely obvious. Washington jurors still acquitted him last year because they thought he should never have been prosecuted. The jury included at least three Clinton donors, another Democratic donor, and someone who thought the justice system is racist.
It’s hard to overstate what is at stake in the former president’s case. If Chutkan allows similar breaches to occur, this will become a show trial, plain and simple. Too many members of the public will not have confidence in the verdict, and our national divisions will become even worse.
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Hudson Crozier is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.