On Tuesday, Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (NY) filed a misconduct complaint with the New York State Unified Court System. The complaint concerns the “random” assignment of Judge Juan Merchan, whom she describes as a far-left radical with conflicts of interest, to oversee Donald Trump’s NYC “hush money” trial.
“I just filed an official misconduct complaint with the New York State Unified Court System related to the ‘random’ assignment of Acting Manhattan Justice Juan Merchan, a Biden donor whose daughter is fundraising millions off his unprecedented work, to criminal cases against President Donald J. Trump, his companies, and his allies,” Elise Stefanik said.
Stefanik isn’t the only one questioning the “random” assignment of Judge Juan Merchan to oversee this case.
Trump attorney Alina Habba recently pointed out how Merchan was also “randomly” assigned to oversee the Steve Bannon case, the Allen Weisselberg case, and now the case involving President Donald Trump.
This can’t be a coincidence!
The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, is a far-left political operative who worked for the Biden-Harris campaign. The media has portrayed 34-year-old Loren Merchan as a victim in an attempt to justify a gag order on Trump’s First Amendment-protected speech.
Loren Merchan’s firm, Authentic Campaigns, Inc., has received tens of millions of dollars from Democrats aiming to take down Trump.
According to The New York Post, Loren Merchan helped Democrats raise $93 million through her father’s case.
This is Rep. Stefanik’s full judicial complaint:
Members of the Commission, and Madam Inspector General,
I am writing to alert you to potential misconduct by Justices and employees of the Supreme Court, Criminal Term, New York County.
The potential misconduct pertains to the repeated assignment of Acting Justice Juan Merchan, a Democrat Party donor, to criminal cases related to President Donald J. Trump and his allies. Acting Justice Merchan currently presides over the criminal case against President Trump brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Acting Justice Merchan also presided over the criminal trial against the Trump Organization and will be presiding over the criminal trial of Steve Bannon, a senior advisor in President Trump’s White House and a prominent advocate for President Trump.1
The website for the Supreme Court, Criminal Term, New York County does not provide a comprehensive list of every justice and acting justice sitting in the courthouse, but based on the courtroom directory there are at least 24 sitting justices on the court.2 Acting Justice Merchan is not even listed among them, one assumes, because of his status as an acting justice.
Section 200.11(c) of the Uniform Rules for New York State Trial Courts requires that criminal actions be assigned to a judge “pursuant to a method of random selection authorized by the Chief Administrator.” If justices were indeed being randomly assigned in the Criminal Term, the probability of two specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is quite low, and the probability of three specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is infinitesimally small. And yet, we see Acting Justice Merchan on all three cases.
This is the same Acting Justice Merchan who, in violation of New York State Code of Judicial Conduct 100.5(h), donated to President Biden’s 2020 campaign, along with the Progressive Turnout Project and its “Stop Republicans” subsidiary.3 It’s also the same Acting Justice whose daughter is a political consultant working for prominent Democrats, whose firm stands to profit greatly if Donald Trump is convicted.4
One cannot help but suspect that the “random selection” at work in the assignment of Acting Justice Merchan, a Democrat Party donor, to these cases involving prominent Republicans, is in fact not random at all. The simple answer to why Acting Justice Merchan has been assigned to these cases would seem to be that whoever made the assignment intentionally selected Acting Justice Merchan to handle them to increase the chance that Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, and Steven Bannon would ultimately be convicted.
I request that both the Commission and the Inspector General investigate this anomaly to determine whether the required random selection process was in fact followed in the assignment of these criminal cases to Acting Justice Merchan. If Acting Justice Merchan or any other Justices of the Court are found to have violated these rules, I would hope that the Commission would subject them to the required discipline. And if any non-judicial employees of the Court are involved in such a scheme, I would hope that the Inspector General subject them to the appropriate sanction.
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