Who is the judge in the Jan 6 case against Trump 1
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 So let's step back, get a good sort of a legal assessment where we stand with
00:03 with both legal broadsides going on, one involving the former president, of course, the other
00:07 the president occupant of the White House, at least through his son and his son's business
00:12 partners. Andy McCarthy back with us. Tom Dupree back with us. Nicole Parker,
00:15 former FBI special agent, back with us. Thank you all. Andy, if I could begin with you on first off,
00:22 what the president is likely facing tomorrow. We've gotten kind of used to this is the third
00:29 time we're going through this, but this is Washington, D.C., different traffic rules,
00:34 I understand. But help us through this. What what what what will this be like?
00:39 Well, because there's been an arraignment, Neil, this is this or because there's been an indictment,
00:46 this will be an arraignment, which means it's a proceeding before the court in which the president
00:52 will with the former president will be asked to enter a plea to the indictment that was just filed
00:58 yesterday. He'll obviously enter a plea of not guilty. It'll be choreographed in the sense that
01:04 because of the security concerns, the Secret Service will have collaborated with the court
01:12 personnel and the other agencies involved in the case to make sure that the former president is
01:17 ushered into the court, is processed as everybody is when they get brought into the criminal justice
01:24 system, they'll bring him to court. It'll be short. He'll enter a plea. Bail will not be an issue
01:32 in this case. And what will happen is the case has already been assigned to a judge. It's not clear to
01:38 me whether the judge will do this proceeding tomorrow or hand it off to a magistrate judges,
01:44 as is pretty common. But they could very well start setting a schedule for pre-trial motions
01:49 and the like as early as tomorrow. So let's get into that a little bit. I believe you're
01:52 talking about this federal district judge, Tanya Chutkanuk. She was appointed by Barack Obama back
01:57 in 2014. Tom Dupree, she's known to be pretty harsh when it comes to these Capitol Hill rioters
02:04 and has handed out some of the stiffer sentences to them. I'm just wondering, knowing what you do,
02:11 and I know these are random selections, it's sort of like a lottery for judges ultimately chosen
02:16 here, but how do you think this will go? I think it is a very significant difference than what
02:22 President Trump has experienced and will experience before, say, Judge Cannon in Florida.
02:27 Judge Chutkan, as you noted, is an Obama appointee. She has had a number of these
02:32 January 6th cases before her, and she's really kind of blazed a different trail than a lot of
02:36 the other federal judges in D.C. in that in some of these January 6th cases, she's actually imposed
02:41 even harsher sentences than the government was pushing for. She's also had some involvement in
02:46 some of the January 6th document discovery. It was her order that basically opened a lot of the
02:51 floodgates to allow investigators to get a hold of Trump White House materials and the like.
02:56 So she's also different than Judge Cannon in that she has some background familiarity
03:00 with this whole January 6th investigation. She's familiar with the players, the legal issues,
03:04 and probably not going too far out on a limb, Neil, to say she is not going to be as favorable
03:09 before President Trump as Judge Cannon has been. If I could switch gears, guys, and Nicole,
03:14 if I could do so with you concerning Devon Archer, the business associate of Hunter Biden's
03:19 and his testimony. It wasn't testimony. It was a question answer session with the House Oversight
03:24 Committee behind closed doors. A lot of people are hoping for a transcript or some sort of
03:28 an exact detailed exchange of what went down there because Democrats say it wasn't damning at all,
03:35 either Hunter Biden or for that matter, the president. Republicans, just the opposite.
03:40 There does seem to be, Nicole, again, this criticism you hear,
03:44 namely from Republicans, that there's a double standard of justice going on here. But what do
03:50 you think? As far as we know right now, based on what we've heard without seeing the transcript,
03:58 it absolutely seems like there's a two-tier justice system here. The things that Hunter
04:03 Biden allegedly did and that maybe Joe Biden was involved with, if that was on the other side of
04:07 the spectrum, if President Trump had been involved in that, there's no way that he would get away
04:11 with that. Absolutely not. And so I think it'll be very interesting. I think with this transcript
04:16 coming out allegedly tomorrow, based on the patterns that we've seen, I wouldn't be surprised
04:20 if there was a fourth indictment of former President Trump coming in on Friday, based on
04:25 the pattern that we've seen. Every time that there's mounting evidence against the Bidens,
04:29 almost to the next day without fail, there's something, another count, another indictment
04:33 or something against former President Trump. Andy, what do you make of the significance of
04:38 just getting that transcript? And people at home reading it for themselves, people always see
04:43 things, and I understand that through the prism of their biases or their own politics. And so
04:48 Republicans will assume the worst, Democrats, it's not so bad, let's move on here. Will that settle
04:55 some of these issues? Well, sure it will, because we get to see it for ourselves. I think, Neil,
05:02 that the Republicans, and I'm not saying this in a partisan way because I support them more
05:09 ideologically, it's just a fact, they've been much better about getting these transcripts public
05:15 when they don't need to be under wraps. And I would contrast that to the Russiagate
05:22 situation where, especially in the Intelligence Committee that was run by Adam Schiff,
05:28 they would cherry pick what they took out of the stuff that wouldn't be on behind closed doors that
05:34 they let us see. And by that way, they were able to sort of fabricate a version of events. So it's
05:42 always much better to have the full transcript. And the one other thing I would add about the
05:47 two-tiered justice system that Nicole was talking about, we at least have an indictment of former
05:53 President Trump that we'll be dealing with tomorrow. Whereas with Hunter Biden, we have
05:58 crimes that go back to 2014. Every day, the statute of limitations is running because the Biden
06:05 Justice Department has not filed an indictment. It is interesting, though, when you step back and
06:10 look at what we are learning in the pursuit of Donald Trump, whether they're justified or not,
06:14 we're up to 78 different counts and charges over three different sweeping indictments.
06:21 Some will say fully justified, others say a little bit overkill. I'm not smart enough to know myself.
06:26 But on this, it's certainly it can be said, even in the handling of the plea bargain deal
06:31 for Hunter Biden, that it was sloppy, ill-prepared and in the end unsuccessful.
06:36 And no guarantee right now it could be sorted out, even though we're told,
06:41 you know, DOJ is still investigating. Do you have confidence they are?
06:49 Well, my sense on that is...
06:51 No, I don't have confidence they are.
06:52 Tom, debrief first. I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention.
06:54 Sorry. I was just going to say, look, my sense is I don't have a lot of confidence
07:01 that this investigation is going on. And I say that for a few reasons. One is I was absolutely
07:06 shocked by the way that whole plea bargain played out. These are very sophisticated lawyers on both
07:10 sides. And to me, it is absolutely unimaginable that they would come to court with this deal.
07:16 They were asking the judge to bless and not have reached an agreement on the most fundamental
07:20 question of all, whether this agreement would insulate Hunter Biden from prosecution for
07:24 further crimes. If I were Hunter Biden's lawyers, I would take the deal even without future immunity
07:29 because he is getting an extremely favorable deal of pleading out to two misdemeanors on the tax
07:34 counts, diversion on the gun count. But I'm not quite sure what DOJ is up to. I mean, we're told
07:39 this investigation is going on and on, but it's been going on for years and we have seen very,
07:43 very little when it comes to actual evidence or actual charges. All right. We might get a better
07:47 idea on the next 24 to 48 hours, maybe on both. But for the time being, the debate rages on
07:53 between various news organizations like which is the more important story we thought we'd address
07:57 both here today. I thank you all very much. I apologize for the truncated time.
08:02 Hey, Sean Hannity here. Hey, click here to subscribe to Fox News YouTube page and catch
08:07 our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis. You will not get it anywhere else.