Former President Donald Trump’s legal team filed a motion for recusal last week against Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over President Donald Trump’s hush-money case set to begin trial on April 15, for alleged conflicts of interest. The judge has well-established political biases — which look particularly bad in light of his recent unlawful gag order that prohibits Trump from making public statements about people involved in the case, including the judge’s anti-Trump activist daughter.
Liberal Judge Merchan’s gag order on President Trump prompted the discovery that Loren Merchan, his daughter, has ties to outspoken Trump opponents. A 2022 wedding announcement in Politico identified Loren Merchan as president and partner of the Democrat marketing firm Authentic Campaigns, the clientele of which includes some of Trump’s top rivals in the Democrat party such as Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump’s lawyers filed a motion to recuse last year due to Loren Merchan’s organization receiving many millions of dollars from top Democrat officials, including the Biden campaign. At the time, however, Trump was not yet the Republican presidential nominee. Since then, the motion alleges, more evidence of partiality has surfaced. As journalist Julie Kelly revealed last Monday, Loren Merchan’s organization has received massive payments from Schiff that totaled $4 million. Schiff reportedly made the payments while he was working to take down Trump with Michael Cohen, who is also set to appear as a witness in Judge Merchan’s courtroom.
Even the judge himself has donated to Democrats. In fact, Federal Election Commission records show he made a donation Joe Biden, Trump’s 2024 rival, during their first presidential matchup in 2020, a donation to a group called Stop Republicans, and more.
“It is so brazen and in your face. … We have a real problem [and] crisis in the judiciary because there has been no oversight of these judges…” Kelly said on “The Benny Show.” “They shove it right in our face and in Donald Trump’s face because they know there’s very limited recourse on this.”
If the obvious conflict of interest weren’t enough, Loren Merchan has frequently donated to Democrat candidates through ActBlue, and her X account previously featured a profile picture of President Trump behind bars.
As the Trump team’s new recusal motion states, “The extent to which these proceedings are interfering with the 2024 election is no longer, as the Court put it previously, ‘remote, speculative, “possible or contingent.”’”
Knowing his daughter’s well-documented partisan ties, Judge Merchan chose to get ahead of Trump revealing the family’s biases, seeing as Trump has exposed other judges’ partisan weaponization before. The judge issued a gag order that blocks Trump from speaking not only about people involved in the case, but about their families.
Judge Merchan’s power play is a flagrant abuse of judicial authority and an egregious violation of the First Amendment. Trump exposing Loren Merhan’s political activity is well within his rights as an American citizen. Yet the judge is trying to silence Trump’s criticisms, effectively shielding himself from accountability and casting a shadow of censorship over the legal proceedings. This gag order on a former president shows Merchan’s massive disregard for free speech and a blatant attempt to protect his own biases from scrutiny.
This judicial overreach not only threatens the former president’s First Amendment rights but also interferes with the election by directly attacking Trump’s campaign and sucking up his resources. Judge Merchan has shown himself to be a partisan puppeteer pulling the strings of justice, and legal experts are astonished he didn’t recuse himself from the case given his daughter’s anti-Trump activism.
“Putting a gag order on a criminal defendant is a clear violation of his constitutional rights,” legal expert and founder of the Article III Project Mike Davis posted on X. “This Democrat judge won’t let the law get in his way of his partisan pursuit of Trump. (Why doesn’t he want the public to know his adult daughter might be profiting from this trial?)”
The expanded gag order also violates the public’s right to know the truth about this trial and the corrupt players behind it. By stifling Trump from addressing politically motivated injustices, Merchan is trying to silence dissent and maintain control of the narrative by instilling fear and intimidation.
It’s a blatant misuse of power, especially ahead of this year’s election, for an openly liberal judge, whose daughter’s campaign consulting firm has ties to Trump’s top adversaries, to gag Trump so he couldn’t expose it. Our justice system rests on upholding the Constitution, and that requires the vehement rejection of Judge Merchan’s attempt to silence Trump and deny him a fair trial. Judge Merchan must recuse himself from this case immediately.
