The Manhattan district attorney’s office is pushing back at the third attempt by former President Trump to recuse the judge overseeing his hush money criminal case.
Earlier this week, Trump’s attorneys demanded the judge step aside over his daughter’s work at the progressive digital agency Authentic — this time over her work for Vice President Harris, who is expected to face off against Trump in November.
“Defendant’s motion to renew is a vexatious and frivolous attempt to relitigate an issue that was twice addressed by this Court in orders that the First Department then refused to disturb,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wrote in a letter made public.
Judge Juan Merchan denied Trump’s similar recusal demands last August and another on the first day of this spring’s blockbuster trial, which ended in the first criminal conviction of a former U.S. president.
Unsuccessfully, Trump’s attorneys have asserted Merchan has a conflict of interest because his daughter stands to benefit if her clients defeat Trump this fall. The judge has repeatedly asserted he had received guidance from a state ethics advisory committee indicating that his recusal is unnecessary.
“No amount of overheated, hyperbolic rhetoric can cure the fatal defects in defendant's ongoing effort to impugn the fairness of these proceedings and the impartiality of this Court. The motion for recusal should be denied for a third time,” prosecutors wrote in their letter.
They also indicated Harris’s ascension into the role of presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, following Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, need not invite additional scrutiny, writing that Trump’s earlier motions, which were denied, already argued that Harris was a “political opponent.”
Merchan’s daughter, Loren, has been the subject of Trump’s ire before over her work for prominent Democrats, including Harris. For months, a gag order has barred the former president from speaking publicly about her.
Trump’s push comes as he awaits his September sentencing, which was delayed several months after the Supreme Court issued its ruling on presidential immunity.
In late May, Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment his ex-fixer made to a porn actor who claimed she had an affair with Trump, who was then running for president in 2016. He has denied the affair and vowed to appeal the conviction.
