‘Zero Percent Chance’: CNN Legal Analyst Kiboshes Trump’s Demand to Boot Judge from 2020 Election Case

John Lauro, the lawyer representing former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election case, made the Sunday morning rounds to promote his defense argument. One demand that Trump has made on Truth Social is that the judge who was randomly chosen to oversee the case be recused. CNN’s Elie Honig bluntly pointed out that was not likely to happen.

Among the many elements of Mauro’s defense tactics that probably wouldn’t work, one of them was the request to recuse U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. CNN host John Berman asked Honig is there was any likelihood of her removal, and his answer was clear:

Very, very unlikely. I would say close to zero percent that the judge gets removed. First thing that I have to clarify: Donald Trump keeps suggesting in his post that this judge was somehow selected by [the Department of Justice] as if they judge-shop. Not at all. Judge Chutkan was “wheeled” out, as we said. There’s a literal wheel that you spin and pull a note card out of. She was randomly assigned to this case. Same way, by the way, Judge [Aileen] Cannon, who Trump appointed, was randomly assigned to his case down in Florida. So let’s get that clear. He keeps suggesting this was handpicked. Not at all. There is no basis to recuse this judge. The fact that she’s an Obama nominee does not at all mean she’s necessarily prejudiced against him again. Same thing with Judge Cannon. She’s a Trump nominee. Doesn’t mean she’s prejudiced in his favor. Yes, this judge has had prior cases relating to January 6. She’s ruled on them correctly. She’s been upheld by the courts of appeals. So this call for her to be recused, I’m sure they’ll make the motion, but it’s doomed to fail.

Honig also throws water on the Trump camp’s request to change the venue of the trial, also calling that unlikely, calling out the purely political reasons why they’re asking for it:

I see why they want that, because Donald Trump got 5 percent of the vote in D.C. in 2020, 68 percent of the vote in West Virginia [a suggested new venue]. It’s not uncommon to make a motion to change venue, but it’s very, very, very uncommon to succeed. You have to show as a defendant that it is utterly impossible to receive a fair trial in that district.

Here’s an example of a change of venue motion that did succeed. If you think back to the 1990s, the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, that case was going to be tried in the courthouse across the street in Oklahoma, which was damaged and people were injured. In that case, it was so extreme that it had to be moved to Colorado.

Then Berman brought up a very nuanced point of the whole case against Trump in special prosecutor Jack Smith’s indictment:

Berman: So there are people who, just because the insurrection happened in Washington, D.C., down the street from this federal courthouse, it needs to be moved because of that. But, Elie Honig, you know that this trial isn’t actually about January 6?

Honig: Right, well, exactly. This case, I think it’s a little bit of a misnomer to call it the “January 6 indictment.” It’s a nice shorthand, but it’s really about the pre-January 6 conspiracy.

Watch the full video above via CNN.

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