NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump lost his last bid for a new judge in his New York hush money criminal case as the case heads toward a key verdict and possible sentencing next month.
In a decision released Wednesday, Judge Juan M. Merchan refused to step aside, saying Trump’s demand was a rehash “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims” about Mercan’s daughter’s political ties and his ability to judge the historic case fairly and impartially.
It is the third time the judge has denied such a request from lawyers for the former president and current Republican candidate.
All three times, they argued that Merchan, a state court judge in Manhattan, has a conflict of interest because of his daughter’s work as a political consultant for prominent Democrats and campaigns. Among them was Vice President Kamala Harris when she ran for president in 2020. She is now her party’s nominee for the White House in 2024.
A state court ethics committee said last year that Merchan could proceed with the case, saying a family member’s independent political activities “do not constitute a reasonable basis to question the judge’s impartiality.”
Merchan has repeatedly said he is confident he will continue to base his statements “on the basis of the evidence and the law, without fear or favor, and without undue influence.”
“With these fundamental principles in mind, this Court now reiterates for the third time what should already be clear — innuendo and misrepresentation do not create a conflict,” Merchan wrote in his three-page ruling. “Recusal is therefore not necessary, much less required.”
But now that Harris is Trump’s Democratic opponent in this year’s White House election, Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche wrote 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 re-litigate the issue.”
Messages seeking comment on the ruling were left with Blanche. 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 to pay porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about her alleged sexual encounter with him in 2006. Prosecutors see the payoff as part of a Trump-led effort to prevent voters from hearing racy stories about him during his first campaign.
Trump says all the stories were false, the company records were not, and that the case was a political maneuver designed to hurt his current campaign. The prosecutor who filed the charges, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, is a Democrat.
Trump has promised to appeal, which legally cannot happen until a defendant is convicted.
Meanwhile, his lawyers took other steps to derail the case. In addition to the motion for disqualification, they requested Merchan to quash the judgment and dismiss the case entirely because of the US Supreme Court ruling in July ruling on presidential immunity.
That ruling limits prosecutions of former presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors from pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial acts were illegal. Trump’s lawyers argue that, in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush-money case should not have been allowed to hear such evidence, such as former White House aides describing how the then-president responded to reports of the Daniels deal.
Earlier this month, Merchan set a date of September 16 for a ruling on the immunity claim, and September 18 for “the imposition of a penalty or other appropriate proceedings.”
The hush money case is one of four criminal charges filed against Trump last year.
One federal case, in which Trump was accused of illegally storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, was rejected last month. The Ministry of Justice is appealing.
The others — federal And state of Georgia Cases involving Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat will not go to trial before the November election.