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Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (left) (via Lev Radin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images), Judge Juan Merchan (center) (AP Photo/Seth Wenig), Donald Trump speaks Tuesday April 2, 2024, at a rally in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office on Monday urged Donald Trump’s hush-money trial judge not to recuse himself based on the “transparently reverse-engineered” campaign of the defense to justify “attacks on the Court and the Court’s family,” specifically the judge’s daughter.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (D), called the renewed Trump recusal bid a “dilatory tactic” — that is, one designed to delay the April 15 criminal trial date — ultimately geared towards “judge-shopping” Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan off of the case based on his daughter’s profession.
Late last week, Trump’s defense argued that Loren Merchan’s work as a Democratic Party political consultant for Authentic Campaigns rises to the level of “an actual conflict and an unacceptable appearance of impropriety” that requires her father to recuse himself.
In May 2023, a New York court ethics panel found Merchan’s “impartiality cannot reasonably be questioned” because of his daughter’s “business and/or political activities” and that he was “not ethically required to disclose them.” Months later, Merchan decided “recusal would not be in the public interest” and that he was “certain in [his] ability to be fair and impartial.”
The Trump team has since countered that “recent developments and new evidence” showed their second recusal bid is both “timely filed and meritorious.” They asserted that the judge’s daughter stands to profit off of the Trump trial.
“Authentic — and Ms. Merchan, as President, ‘partner,’ and ‘part-owner’ — will gain even more as the trial proceeds from both financial and reputational perspectives. This is demonstrated by, for example, Authentic’s efforts in February and March 2024 to market itself using social media posts that derided President Trump and promoted the company’s connections to President Biden and Vice President Harris,” the defense motion said.
Trump further claimed that the judge’s daughter previously, during a podcast interview, “disclosed statements by the Court that reflect bias toward President Trump” over his use of what was then known as Twitter.
“Personal political views may not be a basis for recusal,” the motion argued. “But profiting from the promotion of a political agenda that is hostile to President Trump, and has included fundraising solicitations based on this case, must be. Accordingly, President Trump respectfully requests that the Court recuse itself.”
Bragg responded Monday that while the motion is “nothing more” than a meritless delay tactic, it does attempt to get around the updated gag order that said Trump must “refrain” from making statements about “family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or cause others to materially interfere” with their work.
“Defendant’s motion is not a good-faith effort to identify legitimate grounds for this Court’s recusal. Instead, this motion is no more than an effort to end-run the order restricting extrajudicial speech and pollute the court file with ad hominem attacks against the Court and the Court’s family as part of a meritless effort to call the integrity of these proceedings into question,” the DA said. “And the motion is yet another last-ditch attempt to address defendant’s real objective, which is—as the Court has already recognized—to delay this proceeding indefinitely.”
The DA called Loren Merchan’s work “simply too attenuated from this criminal trial to create even an appearance of impropriety, let alone an actual conflict.”
“All that defendant has shown is that the Court’s family member has a leadership role at a private company; some of the company’s business involves contracting with political candidates; and some of those candidates criticize defendant some of the time, including by mentioning this trial,” Bragg continued. “The Court, of course, is not directly involved with either Authentic or its clients; and neither Authentic, the Court’s family member, nor their clients are parties or witnesses to this case. Any political activities by the Court’s family member are thus wholly independent of this criminal prosecution and ‘do not provide a reasonable basis to question the judge’s impartiality.””
Bragg then lumped the detail about Loren Merchan’s podcast statement about her father into “a grab-bag of other baseless complaints” raised by the defense. The DA called it “outrageous” because it’s not even clear that Loren saying her father “hate[s] that politicians use Twitter” specifically referred to Trump.
“The quoted statements show no such thing,” the filing said, referring to bias. “The five-year-old statement attributed to this Court was that the Court ‘hate[s] that politicians use Twitter.’ But—even if this third-hand podcast quote accurately reflects the Court’s view from five years ago—there is no indication that the sentiment specifically refers to defendant, and the use of the plural word ‘politicians’ indicates otherwise since, as of 2019, many politicians used Twitter—including President Biden, Vice President Harris, and many of the other candidates whom defendant deems to be his political opponents.”
Bragg said it was “wrong and irresponsible” to say that a critique of politicians’ social media use more broadly is evidence of animus against Trump that requires recusal.
In closing, the prosecution said that the recusal motion, while a delay tactic, is also aimed at “judge-shopping.”
“Courts have an obligation to reject unsupported recusal motions to deter parties from judge-shopping that can undermine the perception of fairness in the justice system,” the filing said. “Indeed, as this Court already recognized, ‘[a] judge is as much obliged not to recuse himself when it is not called for as he is obliged to when it is.’”
Trump lawyers had argued that the gag order in the case over his posts about the judge’s daughter was inappropriate since the former president only “amplified defense arguments regarding the need for recusal.” “The posts were “properly understood” as a criticism of Merchan’s refusal to recuse himself, the defense said.
Merchan responded one week ago by saying Trump’s explanation for his “dangerous rhetoric” was “farcical.”
“Defendant, in his opposition of April 1, 2024, desperately attempts to justify, and explain away his dangerous rhetoric by ‘turning the tables’ and blaming those he attacks. The arguments counsel makes are at best strained and at worst baseless misrepresentations which are uncorroborated and rely upon innuendo and exaggeration,” Merchan said. “Put mildly, the assortment of allegations presented as ‘facts’ and cobbled together, result in accusations that are disingenuous and not rational. To argue that the most recent attacks, which included photographs, were ‘necessary and appropriate in the current environment,’ is farcical.”
Read the DA’s response here.
