NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump has lost his latest bid for a new judge in his New York hush money criminal case as it heads toward a key ruling and potential sentencing next month.
In a decision posted Wednesday, Judge Juan M. Merchan declined to step aside and said Trump’s demand was a rehash “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims” about his ability to remain impartial.
It is the third time that Merchan has rejected such a request from lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee. They contend the judge has a conflict of interest because his daughter works as a political consultant for prominent Democrats, including Kamala Harris when she sought the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination. Harris is now the party’s nominee against Trump.
The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, met Harris occasionally in 2019 but never “developed an individual relationship” with her, consulting firm founder Mike Nellis told the chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in a letter Tuesday. The firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc., has not worked for Harris’ campaign, President Joe Biden’s now-ended reelection bid or the Democratic National Committee in the 2024 election cycle, Nellis said.
A state court ethics panel said last year that Merchan could continue as the judge on Trump’s case. The panel wrote that a relative’s independent political activities are not “a reasonable basis 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 certain he can handle Trump’s case fairly and impartially. In his ruling, Merchan wrote he will continue to base decisions “on the evidence and the law, without fear or favor, casting aside undue influence.”
“With these fundamental principles in mind, this Court now reiterates for the third time, that which should already be clear — innuendo and mischaracterizations do not a conflict create,” Merchan wrote in his three-page decision. “Recusal is therefore not necessary, much less required.”
But with Harris now Trump’s opponent, Trump 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…