{"id":2879,"date":"2026-05-07T12:42:01","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T12:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/?p=2879"},"modified":"2026-05-07T12:42:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T12:42:01","slug":"gachagua-drops-judge-bias-claims-bets-everything-on-impeachment-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/2026\/05\/07\/gachagua-drops-judge-bias-claims-bets-everything-on-impeachment-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Gachagua Drops Judge Bias Claims, Bets Everything on Impeachment Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rigathi Gachagua has quietly shelved one of the more contentious threads of his legal fight, withdrawing a bias challenge against three High Court judges to concentrate entirely on the impeachment petition that started it all.<\/a><\/p>\n

His lawyer, Kamotho Njomo, sent a letter to the court on May 4 formally pulling the appeal that had contested a Court of Appeal ruling allowing Justices Eric Ogolla, Anthony Mrima, and Fredah Mugambi to keep presiding over the case. The reason was straightforward: once the Supreme Court refused to suspend the High Court proceedings, the appeal had lost its practical purpose.<\/a><\/p>\n

“The matter had been overtaken by events,” Njomo’s letter indicated, a phrase that carried more weight than it might seem. Pursuing a side argument about who should hear the case makes little sense when the case itself is already running.<\/p>\n

The bias argument had been a sore point from early on. Gachagua’s team raised concerns about the three judges’ impartiality, but the Court of Appeal swatted those claims away in May 2025, finding no credible evidence to back them up.<\/p>\n

The backstory is tangled. Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu originally constituted the bench in October 2024 to hear petitions against the impeachment. That appointment later drew its own legal fire\u2014the Court of Appeal ruled she had overstepped her authority under Article 165(4) of the Constitution. Chief Justice Martha Koome subsequently reconstituted the same bench through the correct procedure, patching the procedural gap.<\/a><\/p>\n

The National Assembly added another thread by taking the matter to the Supreme Court, challenging the Court of Appeal’s finding on Mwilu’s powers.<\/p>\n

Gachagua’s decision to cut loose the bias appeal reads as a calculated reset. Rather than fighting on multiple fronts and risking delay, his team appears to have decided that the central question\u2014whether Parliament’s decision to remove him was lawful\u2014is the only hill worth holding.<\/p>\n

The High Court will now have to answer that question without the sideshows.<\/p>\n

\n

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Rigathi Gachagua has quietly shelved one of the more contentious threads of his legal fight, withdrawing a bias challenge against three High Court judges to concentrate entirely on the impeachment petition that started it all. His lawyer, Kamotho Njomo, sent a letter to the court on May 4 formally pulling the appeal that had contested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[734,19],"class_list":["post-2879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-high-court-judges","tag-rigathi-gachagua"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stateupdate.co.ke\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/images-10.jpg?fit=225%2C225&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pc68Dd-Kr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2879"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2885,"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions\/2885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateupdate.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}