MANHATTAN (CN) — Donald Trump on Wednesday lost his latest attempt to replace the judge overseeing his New York hush money criminal case ahead of the former president’s scheduled sentencing next month.
It was Trump's third request for New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan's recusal. The former president has claimed repeatedly that Merchan has a conflict of interest because of his daughter’s work as a political consultant for Democratic political candidates including Vice President Kamala Harris.
With Harris now leading the ticket for Democrats in this year’s presidential election against Trump, the former president argued in his motion last month that Merchan’s supposed conflicts are now more pressing than ever.
Merchan disagrees.
“Defendant has provided nothing new for this court to consider,” Merchan wrote in a three-page decision made public Wednesday. “Counsel has merely repeated arguments that have already been denied by this and higher courts. Defense counsel’s reliance, and apparent citation to his own prior affirmation, rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims, is unavailing.”
As Merchan has noted repeatedly, a judicial ethics panel opined last year that the work of his daughter, Loren Merchan, poses no real threat to the judge’s objectivity. “A relative’s independent political activities do not provide a reasonable basis to question the judge’s impartiality,” the panel wrote.
Citing that opinion, Merchan lamented Trump’s “stale and unsubstantiated” claims.
“This court now reiterates for the third time, that which should already be clear — innuendo and mischaracterizations do not a conflict create,” Merchan wrote. “Recusal is therefore not necessary, much less required.”
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.
Merchan, echoing his previous rulings against recusal in Trump's case, said he will continue to base his decisions on “evidence and the law, without fear or favor, casting aside undue influence.”
But the judge’s word hasn’t stopped Trump and his allies from attacking Merchan, his daughter and her political consulting firm, Authentic, on baseless allegations that they tilted the criminal trial in prosecutors’ favor to meddle with the presidential election.
Those attacks have made it all the way to Congress. Earlier this month, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee penned a letter to Authentic demanding documents and communications related to the firm’s work with Harris, President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.
On Tuesday, Authentic founder Mike Nellis panned the committee for furthering the “false right-wing conspiracy theory,” which he claims has endangered the lives of Loren Merchan and his other employees.
“The manipulation and misrepresentation of cherry-picked information included throughout your letter is harming innocent people and setting a dangerous precedent for members of Congress to use their power to intimidate and execute politically motivated attacks on private citizens, even targeting the family member of a judge,” Nellis wrote in his response to the House Judiciary Committee.
These concerns are precisely why Trump is still under a gag order that bars him from speaking about the families of those involved in the case. The order will remain in place until at least September, when Trump is set to be sentenced for 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
A Manhattan jury in May found Trump illegally fudged his company’s records to cover up a hush money scheme related to his 2016 presidential run. The guilty verdict made Trump the first president, current or former, to be convicted of a crime.
Prosecutors prevailed in arguing Trump ordered a $130,000 payment through his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to former adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016 — hush money to keep Daniels from going to the press about a tryst with Trump ten years prior.
When it came time for Trump to repay Cohen, the jury found that Trump falsified invoices, ledger entries and checks, by writing them off as standard legal payments. During the trial, Manhattan prosecutors presented evidence that suggested Trump had signed the phony checks from the Oval Office in 2017.
Trump has vowed to appeal, but he’ll have to wait until his sentencing to do so.
Until then, Trump’s lawyers are trying to derail the case by arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity should void the conviction. Merchan will rule on those efforts prior to Trump’s sentencing next month.
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