We’re a week out from jury selection in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York. So expect this week to include rejections of desperate defense attempts to further delay the criminal case.
One of those rejections will likely include Trump’s request that Judge Juan Merchan recuse himself. A clue that Trump will lose his recusal motion is that he has already lost it before.
Merchan rejected a recusal attempt last summer that cited the judge’s daughter’s work for a digital marketing agency that works with Democratic candidates as well as nonprofits. In denying that strained effort, Merchan wrote that Trump had failed to demonstrate “concrete, or even realistic reasons for recusal to be appropriate, much less required on these grounds.”
Nonetheless, Trump has rehashed the recusal bid just ahead of the trial. But Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg cast it as another delay attempt that Merchan should reject, with his office writing that Trump’s “rewarmed arguments identify no new law or fact that calls into question this Court’s prior conclusion.”
Merchan has shown that he isn’t up for entertaining Trump’s delay attempts or other shenanigans as the trial nears. The judge recently expanded Trump’s gag order (following his statements about the judge’s daughter) and rejected Trump’s immunity claim and his attempt to go on a “fishing expedition,” regarding the new Stormy Daniels documentary. Expect this rehashed recusal effort to meet the same fate, and for the first criminal trial against a former U.S. president to proceed April 15. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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