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NY Judge Tosses Trump's Third Attempt To Intimidate His Family Via Recusal Motion

Very subtle, Mister 'President.'

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Jury Selection In Donald Trump’s Hush-Money Criminal Trial

(Photographer: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Justice Juan Merchan is not recusing from Donald Trump’s false business records case. Again.

Since the beginning of this case, the defendant has argued that the judge is biased by his daughter’s work for a Democratic public relations firm. But even before Trump filed his first recusal motion in May of 2023, the judge consulted the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics, which issued an opinion finding that “the judge’s impartiality cannot reasonably be questioned based on the judge’s relative’s business and/or political activities, and the judge is not ethically required to disclose them.”

Trump tried again in April of 2024, when he was rebuffed by both Justice Merchan and the First Judicial Department.

But after President Biden dropped out of the electoral race in July and was replaced by Vice President Harris, Trump’s lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove renewed their motion for the judge’s recusal a third time, employing their signature brand of screaming hyperbole and gross innuendos:

President Trump is the Republican nominee and leading candidate in the 2024 Presidential election. Harris emerged as his presumptive opponent after it became apparent to the public that the Biden Administration’s lawfare against President Trump was motivated by President Biden’s alarming decline. Harris immediately framed her candidacy with a specific false reference to this case as a contest of “prosecutor vs. convicted felon.” Your Honor has insisted on maintaining an unconstitutional Gag Order, backed by threats of imprisonment made during the trial, that prevents President Trump from responding fully to that inaccurate attack. Making matters worse, this week the Biden Administration unveiled an unprecedented plot to mount a political assault on the Supreme Court in response to the Presidential immunity ruling that is central to President Trump’s pending motion.

The District Attorney’s Office responded that “Defendant’s motion to renew is a vexatious and frivolous attempt to relitigate an issue that was twice addressed by this Court in orders that the First Department then refused to disturb.”

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“No amount of overheated, hyperbolic rhetoric can cure the fatal defects in defendant’s ongoing effort to impugn the fairness of these proceedings and the impartiality of this Court,” they added. “The motion for recusal should be denied for a third time.”

For his part, Justice Merchan seems entirely fed up with the exercise.

“This Court set a deadline of June 13, 2024, for the filing of post-verdict motions. Defendant did not file any motions by that deadline,” he noted testily, observing that Trump filed his motion a full 48 days after the deadline, without seeking the court’s permission, in what “would appear to be nothing more than an attempt to air grievances against this Court’s rulings.”

“Counsel has merely repeated arguments that have already been denied by this and higher courts,” the court concluded. “Defense Counsel’s reliance, and apparent citation to his own prior affirmation, rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims, is unavailing.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s pal Jim Jordan is staging a naked campaign to intimidate the judge and his daughter ahead of the September 18 sentencing and decision on Trump’s request to vacate the verdict based on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

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Rep. Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, fired off a letter to the judge’s daughter demanding internal communications from her employer as well as messages to her own father. And if this young woman faces trollstorms or even physical danger because of Jordan’s craven political posturing, he does not care.

So for, though, the judge remains unintimidated. In a letter to the parties on August 5, he promised to render his decision on the immunity motion on September 16.

“Please note, the court appearance scheduled for September 18, 2024, at 10 A.M. remains unchanged,” he added ominously.

People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump [Docket via Law360]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

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