Trump loses bid for new judge in hush money trial again

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump has lost his latest bid for a new judge in his New York criminal case over hush money, with a key ruling and possible sentencing expected next month.

In a decision released Wednesday, Judge Juan M. Merchan refused to resign, saying Trump's request was a rehash “full of inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims” about his ability to remain impartial.

It is the third time Merchan has denied such a request from the former president and current Republican candidate's lawyers. They claim the judge has a conflict of interest because his daughter works as a political adviser to prominent Democrats, including Kamala Harris when she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Harris is now the party's nominee against Trump.

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

A state court ethics committee ruled last year that Merchan could continue to serve as a judge in the Trump case. The panel wrote that a relative's independent political activities were “not a reasonable reason 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 confident he can handle Trump's case fairly and impartially. In his ruling, Merchan wrote that he will continue to make his decisions “based on the evidence and the law, without fear or favor, and setting aside undue influence.”

“With these basic principles in mind, this Court now reiterates for the third time what should have been clear by now: innuendo and misrepresentation do not create a conflict,” Merchan wrote in his three-page decision. “A dismissal is therefore not necessary, let alone required.”

But with Harris now Trump's opponent, Trump's 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 allegations “a vexatious and frivolous attempt to retry the case.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung pointed to Merchan's donation to Biden and Loren Merchan's advisory work, calling him “a highly conflicted judge” who “should have recused himself from this case a long time ago.”

Merchan “has proven himself to be biased against President Trump and is beholden not only to the partisan interests of the Democrats, but also to the blatant financial interests of an immediate family member,” Cheung said.

Trump railed against Merchan on his Truth Social platform for continuing to impose a partial news blackout on him – an issue that was not part of the dismissal decision. Earlier this month, a state appeals court upheld the news blackout, which prohibits Trump from making public comments about the prosecution team, court staff 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 company's records to cover up a 2016 deal in which he paid porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about her alleged sexual experience with him in 2006. Prosecutors described the payment as part of a Trump-directed effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first campaign.

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

Trump has announced that he will appeal, but this can only happen once the verdict is final.

Meanwhile, his lawyers have taken further steps to block the case. In addition to the motion to dismiss, they have asked Merchan to vacate the verdict and dismiss the case because of the U.S. Supreme Court's July ruling on presidential immunity.

That ruling puts a brake on the prosecution of former presidents for official acts and limits prosecutors' ability to use official acts as evidence that a president's unofficial actions were illegal. Trump's lawyers argue that, given the ruling, jurors in the hush-money trial should not have heard evidence such as former White House staffers' descriptions of how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the Daniels deal.

Merchan has announced that he will decide on the immunity request on September 16 and set September 18 as the date for “imposition of the sentence or, if necessary, further proceedings.”

Jordan, the chairman of the House committee, sent a letter to Loren Merchan on August 1 demanding that she turn over all documents related to the Harris and Biden campaigns, as well as any conversations 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 said that some Authentic clients have mentioned Trump's case in fundraising appeals, and that there is at least “the impression” that Loren Merchan and the firm could benefit. But Nellis, the firm's founder, said that she does not receive a percentage of the money raised by her clients and that “neither Authentic nor Ms. Merchan benefits financially from any verdicts in Donald Trump's criminal or civil cases.”

The judge's daughter, who became a partner in the firm after 2019, had only “minimal influence or contact with political clients” during this cycle and was unaware of any communication with clients mentioning Trump's trial, Nellis added.

Anything she may have said to her father about the criminal proceedings would have been “for the purpose of ensuring her and her family's well-being and safety,” Nellis wrote. He pointed out that she had received death threats and that police had advised her and her family several times to leave the house “for their own safety.”

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

A federal case accusing Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was dismissed last month. The Justice Department has appealed.

The other cases – federal and state cases in Georgia involving Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat – are not expected to go to trial before the November election.