Left: Judge Juan Merchan poses for a picture in his chambers in New York, Thursday, March 14, 2024. Merchan is presiding over Donald Trump’s hush money case in New York (AP Photo/Seth Wenig). Right: FILE – Former President Donald Trump is escorted to a courtroom, April 4, 2023, in New York (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File).
President Donald Trump has launched an appeal that could undo his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records, arguing once again that the hush-money trial judge who donated $35 to Democratic groups in 2020 wrongly refused to step aside from the case.
In a nearly 100-page filing with the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, First Department, Trump’s Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys, including former Acting Solicitor General of the United States Jeffrey Wall, blasted acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D).
Law&Crime reported time and again on Trump’s failed bids to force Merchan’s recusal through various motions that complained of his daughter’s work for Democrats and the jurist’s political donations.
Trump also sued the judge directly, but without success, over gag orders imposed in the case.
Many of those same grievances are front and center in the president’s lengthy appellate documents.
Trump’s lawyers asserted that Bragg “manufactured felony charges” to impact the 2024 election on the strength of a “convoluted legal theory,” arguing the prosecution “should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction.”
“The trial was fatally marred by the introduction of official Presidential acts that the Supreme Court has made clear cannot be used as evidence against a President,” the filing said. “The jury was instructed incorrectly, allowing a conviction without the unanimity required by both New York law and basic due process. Beyond these fatal flaws, the evidence was clearly insufficient to convict.”
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On top of that “overwhelming error,” the filing argued Merchan should have recused himself but never did, even though the defense claimed to have, at minimum, established an “appearance of bias.”
“[T]he trial was conducted by a judge who refused to recuse himself despite having made political contributions to President Trump’s electoral opponents and despite having disqualifying family conflicts. For each of these independent reasons, President Trump’s conviction must be set aside,” the brief said.
Near the end of the brief, Trump attorneys dedicated a whole section to spelling out just why, in their view, Merchan should have recused himself from presiding over the case, starting with the $35 total he donated to ActBlue and the Stop Republicans PAC in 2020.
“These prohibited political contributions standing alone required recusal here. New York’s bright-line rule against such contributions exists to guard against the ‘heightened risk that the public … might perceive judges’ as biased towards or against ‘a particular political leader or party,'” the filing said. “That risk was at its apex in this extraordinary case.”
If Merchan had instead donated to Trump, DA Bragg would have “rightly” flipped out, the brief continued.
“There is little doubt that DANY would have cried foul if Justice Merchan had donated $35 to President Trump’s 2020 campaign, and rightly so,” Trump lawyers said, asking the appellate division to “reverse the judgment of conviction and dismiss the indictment.”
