The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s trial should recuse himself for his “clear judicial bias,” says Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.
“Democrat Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan, who donated to [President Joe] Biden’s campaign and another anti-Trump cause in 2020, has a clear judicial bias against President Trump,” Stefanik wrote on X.
“Merchan’s adult daughter is a Democrat political operative who has financially benefited from her father’s unprecedented trial of President Trump. When Trump raised this additional evidence of Judge Merchan’s bias, Merchan retaliated by expanding his unconstitutional gag order on Trump.
“The law and common sense absolutely requires Judge Merchan’s recusal from President Trump’s trial,” she added.
“We cannot allow a biased, far-left activist judge to strip the American people of our constitutional right to select their own leaders.”
Merchan on Monday expanded a gag order on Trump from attacking the judge’s family members, according to an AP report.
Last week, he issued an order prohibiting Trump from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors, and court staff, as well as their relatives.
“This pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose,” Merchan wrote. “It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game’ for defendant’s vitriol.”
Merchan’s daughter, Loren, is a political consultant who has worked with Democrat candidates. Trump had accused her of having posted a photo of him behind bars on X. Last Thursday, he accused her of being “a Rabid Trump Hater, who has admitted to having conversations with her father about me, and yet he gagged me.”
The former president then renewed his demands that the judge recuse himself from the case, calling Merchan “totally compromised.”
