Yet now, on a thinner pretext, Democrats are satisfied to see Butina in court defending against accusations of being a “spy.” Sixty or seventy years ago, many Democrats indignantly rejected the idea that Russians, and their American associates, who had in fact done exactly such things were engaged in spying or being agents of influence. government, for example, or wormed her way into a position of influence over policy in any key, highly leverageable American institution, such as government, the academy, or a major media company. There is no suggestion so far that Butina compromised employees of the U.S. The brief against her amounts to far less than what was alleged against possible Soviet agents in the 1940s and 1950s. As far as the public can discern, Butina is accused of being a spy - or perhaps an agent of influence - because she met people and arranged forum discussions relating to gun rights. At the very least, however, it is a restriction on the defense, in a decidedly murky case. This judicial move may or may not be over the line or unusual. The Butina case made the news recently when Chutkan indicated she might impose a gag order on Butina’s counsel to prevent a robust media campaign by the defense. Oddly enough, Judge Chutkan is now presiding over the federal case being brought against alleged Russian spy Maria Butina. (See Daily Caller link above.)īut there’s still more to it. It’s also significant that Boies Schiller, Chutkan’s former firm, represented Huma Abedin in the Hillary-emails case. provide abortions to two illegal minors, Ignoring the vast array of evidence that Imran Awan has been running extremely shady operations, and seeming to swallow his lawyer’s story that Awan’s greatest concern is getting to Pakistan so he can build a women’s shelter, dovetails nicely with the form of political bias Chutkan has shown in some other decisions.Īnd it’s important to recall that Imran Awan’s lawyer, Chris Gowen, is a former aide to Hillary Clinton. Her sentencing of Imran Awan seems to fit the political pattern of other recent rulings, which have included ordering that the U.S. It has never been clear why Chutkan didn’t simply pass on the cases at the outset, rather than sitting them for a while and then recusing herself. The odd thing is that Chutkan also ended up with another Fusion GPS case (in which a Russian oligarch sued BuzzFeed for publishing material from the Steele dossier), and in that case too had to recuse herself after presiding over it for a period of time.
She left Boies Schiller in 2014 to take her seat on the U.S. However, it could not be established that Chutkan herself had participated in that case. The law firm Chutkan came from, Boies Schiller, had worked for the start-up company Theranos (now disgraced and accused of fraudulent claims), and had done so in conjunction with Fusion GPS, hired by Theranos to discredit plaintiffs. No reason was given, but observers speculated that the recusal was due to a prior connection with Fusion GPS. Although the House and the bank reached an initial agreement, Fusion found some of the terms unacceptable, and pressed to prevent disclosure of certain records.ĭuring this process, in November 2017, Chutkan abruptly recused herself from the case. In October 2017, she held teleconferences with the parties - Congress, the bank, and Fusion GPS - to try to get them to work it out. When the House of Representatives subpoenaed bank records on Fusion GPS in 2017, Judge Chutkan presided over the initial lawsuit brought to fight the subpoena. We’ll start with the Fusion GPS cases, however.
When she caught the Awan case, numerous commentators observed that she had also had to recuse herself from two separate cases involving Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the Steele dossier - because she somehow ended up with both of those cases.
Chutkan, an Obama appointee with a rather remarkable history. The last point is what interests us here. Trending: Biden daughter’s diary spoke of being sexualized at young age, taking ‘inappropriate’ showers with Joe Bidenįinally, the federal judge presiding over the bank fraud case against Imran Awan, erratic D.C.-area entrepreneur and erstwhile “IT aide” to congressional Democrats, awarded Awan no jail time in his plea deal, explaining that Awan had “suffered enough.”
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