Judge rejects Donald Trump’s latest demand to step aside from hush money criminal case

Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump has lost his latest bid for a new judge in his New York hush money criminal case as it heads toward a key ruling and potential sentencing next month.

In a decision posted Wednesday, Judge Juan M. Merchan declined to step aside and said Trump’s demand was a rehash “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims” about his ability to remain impartial.

It is the third time that Merchan has rejected such a request from lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee. They contend the judge has a conflict of interest because his daughter works as a political consultant for prominent Democrats, including Kamala Harris when she sought the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination. Harris is now the party’s nominee against Trump.

The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, met Harris occasionally in 2019 but never “developed an individual relationship” with her, consulting firm founder Mike Nellis told the chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in a letter Tuesday. The firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc., has not worked for Harris’ campaign, President Joe Biden’s now-ended reelection bid or the Democratic National Committee in the 2024 election cycle, Nellis said.

A state court ethics panel said last year that Merchan could continue as the judge on Trump’s case. The panel wrote that a relative’s independent political activities are not “a reasonable basis to question the judge’s impartiality.”

Merchan, a state court judge in Manhattan, acknowledged last year that he made several small donations to Democratic causes during the 2020 campaign, including $15 to Biden. But Merchan has repeatedly said he is certain he can handle Trump’s case fairly and impartially. In his ruling, Merchan wrote he will continue to base decisions “on the evidence and the law, without fear or favor, casting aside undue influence.”

“With these fundamental principles in mind, this Court now reiterates for the third time, that which should already be clear — innuendo and mischaracterizations do not a conflict create,” Merchan wrote in his three-page decision. “Recusal is therefore not necessary, much less required.”

But with Harris now Trump’s opponent, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche argued in a letter to the judge last month that the defense’s concerns have become “even more concrete.”

Prosecutors called the claims “a vexatious and frivolous attempt to relitigate” the issue.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung, citing Merchan’s donation to Biden and Loren Merchan’s consulting work, slammed him as a “highly-conflicted judge” who “should have long ago recused himself from this case.”

Merchan “has proved to be biased against President Trump and beholden to not only Democrat partisan interests, but also to the glaring financial interests of an immediate family member,” Cheung said.

Trump railed against Merchan on his Truth Social platform for continuing to keep him under a partial gag order — an issue that was not part of the recusal decision. Earlier this month, a state appeals court upheld the gag order, which bars Trump from making public comments about the prosecution team, court staffers or their families, including Merchan’s daughter.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.

Trump was convicted in May of falsifying his business’ records to conceal a 2016 deal to pay off porn actor Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with him. Prosecutors cast the payout as part of a Trump-driven effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first campaign.

Trump says all the stories were false, the business records were not and the case was a political maneuver meant to damage his current campaign. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a Democrat.

Trump has pledged to appeal, but that can’t happen until he is sentenced.

In the meantime, his lawyers have taken other steps to try to derail the case. Besides the recusal request, they’ve asked Merchan to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s July presidential immunity ruling.

That decision reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal. Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the Daniels deal.

Merchan has said he will rule on the immunity claim on Sept. 16 and set Sept. 18 for “the imposition of sentence or other proceedings as appropriate.”

Jordan, the House committee chairman, sent a letter to Loren Merchan on Aug. 1 demanding she turn over any documents pertaining to the Harris and Biden campaigns, any discussions she or her firm may have had about Trump’s hush money prosecution, and any conversations she may have had with her father about the case.

Jordan suggested that because some Authentic clients have mentioned Trump’s case in fundraising solicitations, there was at least “a perception” that Loren Merchan and the firm could profit from it. But Nellis, the firm’s founder, said it does not get a percentage of any money its clients raise and that “neither Authentic nor Ms. Merchan benefits financially from any rulings in Donald Trump’s criminal or civil trials.”

The judge’s daughter, who became a partner in the firm after 2019, has had only “minimal input or contact with any political clients” this cycle and wasn’t aware of any client communications that mentioned Trump’s trial, Nellis added.

Anything she may have said to her father about the criminal case would have been “for the purpose of confirming her and her family’s well-being and safety,” Nellis wrote. He noted that she had faced death threats and that law enforcement had advised her and her family to leave their home several times “for their own safety.”

The hush money case is one of four criminal prosecutions brought against Trump last year.

One federal case, accusing Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, was dismissed last month. The Justice Department is appealing.

The others — federal and Georgia state cases concerning Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss — are not positioned to go to trial before the November election.