NEW YORK: Former President Donald Trump is demanding a new judge just days before his hush-money criminal case is set to go to trial, rehashing longstanding grievances with the current judge in a long-shot, eleventh-hour bid to disrupt and delay the case.
Trump’s lawyers — echoing his recent social media complaints — urged Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan to step aside from the case, alleging a conflict of interest and bias because his daughter is a Democratic political consultant. The judge rejected a similar request last August.
In court papers made public Friday, Trump’s lawyers said it is improper for Merchan “to preside over these proceedings while Ms. Merchan benefits, financially and reputationally, from the manner in which this case is interfering” with Trump’s campaign as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
The trial is scheduled to begin April 15. It is the first of Trump’s four criminal cases scheduled to go to trial and would be the first-ever criminal trial of a former president.
Merchan did not immediately rule. The decision on recusal is entirely up to him. If he were to exit, it would throw the trial schedule into disarray, giving Trump a long-sought delay while a new judge gets up to speed.
Messages seeking comment were left for a court spokesperson and for Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, has said it wants Merchan to remain.
Former President Donald Trump (R) and his accuser, adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels. (REUTERS/File Photo)
In a letter this week after Trump’s lawyers signaled they would seek Merchan’s recusal, prosecutors told him they saw no reason for him to step aside.
The defense’s claims that Loren Merchan is profiting from her father’s decisions in the hush-money case require “multiple attenuated factual leaps here that undercut any direct connection” between her firm and this case, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wrote.
“This daisy chain of innuendos is a far cry from evidence” that Judge Merchan has a direct, personal or financial interest in reaching a particular conclusion, Colangelo wrote.
Loren Merchan is the president of Authentic Campaigns, a political consulting firm that has collected at least $70 million in payments from Democratic candidates and causes since she helped found the company in 2018, records show.
The firm’s past clients include President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Senate Majority PAC, a big-spending political committee affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that works to elect Senate Democrats. Senate Majority PAC has paid Authentic Campaigns $15.2 million, according to campaign finance disclosures.
Also Friday, Merchan blocked Trump’s lawyers from forcing NBC to provide them with materials related to the TV network’s recent documentary about porn actor Stormy Daniels, a key prosecution witness.
Merchan ruled that the defense’s subpoena for NBC Universal was “the very definition of a fishing expedition” and did not meet a heavy legal burden for requiring a news organization to provide unfettered access to its privileged notes and documents.
On Wednesday, Merchan rejected the presumptive Republican nominee’s request to delay the trial until the Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity claims he raised in another of his criminal cases.
The hush money case centers on allegations that Trump falsified his company’s internal records to hide the true nature of payments to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who helped Trump bury negative stories during the 2016 presidential campaign. Among other things, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and his lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses and not part of any cover-up.
Trump previewed his lawyers’ renewed push to have Merchan exit the case with a series of posts assailing the judge and his daughter last week on his Truth Social platform.
Trump suggested, without evidence, that Merchan’s rulings — including his decision to place Trump under a gag order — were swayed by his daughter’s political consulting interests and wrongly claimed that she had posted a photo on social media showing him behind bars. Trump’s attacks on Lauren Merchan led the judge to expand the gag order to prohibit him from making public statements about his family.
“The Judge has to recuse himself immediately, and right the wrong committed by not doing so last year,” Trump wrote on March 27. “If the Biased and Conflicted Judge is allowed to stay on this Sham ‘Case,’ it will be another sad example of our Country becoming a Banana Republic, not the America we used to know and love.”
Trump’s lawyers put a similar focus on Merchan’s daugther when they called on him to leave the case last year. Merchan had also made several small donations totaling $35 to Democratic causes during the 2020 campaign, including $15 to Biden.
Merchan rejected that request, writing last August then that a state court ethics panel had found that Loren Merchan’s work had no bearing on his impartiality. The judge said he was certain of his “ability to be fair and impartial” and said Trump’s lawyers had “failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic reasons for recusal to be appropriate, much less required on these grounds.”
Trump’s lawyers contend that circumstances have now changed, with Trump locked in a rematch against President Joe Biden, and Democrats — including clients of Loren Merchan’s firm — seeking to capitalize on Trump’s legal troubles with fundraising emails and other materials framed around developments in the hush-money case.
“It would be completely unacceptable to most New Yorkers if the judge presiding over these proceedings had an adult child who worked at WinRed or MAGA Inc.,” Blanche and Necheles added, referring to a Republican fundraising platform and a pro-Trump fundraising committee.
Trump’s lawyers also took issue with Merchan’s decision to give an interview to The Associated Press last month, suggesting he may have violated judicial conduct rules, and they questioned his use of a court spokesperson last week to deny Trump’s claims that she had posted the image of Trump in jail.
In the interview, Merchan told the AP that he and his staff were working diligently to prepare for the historic first trial of a former president, saying: “There’s no agenda here. We want to follow the law. We want justice to be done.”
