Donald Trump has again lashed out at the judge who put him under a gag order ahead of his hush-money trial in April.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the former president said New York Judge Juan Merchan “should be immediately sanctioned and recused.”
The case is set to be the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial when it begins on April 15 as the presumptive Republican nominee campaigns to reclaim the White House.
The case centers on allegations that Trump falsely logged payments to Michael Cohen, then his lawyer, as legal fees when they were to reimburse him for money paid to bury allegations of extramarital sexual encounters during Trump’s successful 2016 election campaign.
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Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 counts of falsifying business records, a felony punishable by up to four years in prison. He denies all wrongdoing.
“This is a disgrace to our Legal System,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Judge Merchan should be immediately sanctioned and recused, and this fake ‘case,’ only kept alive by the Highly Conflicted Judge, should be completely dismissed right away—THERE IS NO CASE, THERE IS NO CRIME.”
He added that “all Legal Experts and Scholars universally agree that this is a case that should have never been brought. IT IS A POLITICAL, ELECTION-INTERFERING WITCH HUNT, JUST LIKE ALL OF THE OTHER HOAXES, HEADED UP AND COORDINATED BY THE DOJ, AGAINST THE POLITICAL OPPONENT OF CROOKED JOE BIDEN IN ORDER TO HELP GET THE WORST PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES RE-ELECTED!”
Newsweek has contacted a Trump spokesperson for comment via email. Merchan has been contacted for comment via an email to a spokesperson for New York’s state court system.
In recent days, Trump has repeatedly attacked Merchan and his daughter, Loren Merchan, whose firm has worked on campaigns for President Joe Biden and other Democrats.
He claimed that Merchan’s daughter had recently posted a photo on social media depicting her “obvious goal” of seeing him jailed.
The account on X, formerly Twitter, that Trump was referring to no longer belongs to Loren Merchan, and appears to have been taken over by someone else after she deleted it last year, a spokesperson for New York’s state court system said.
The account “is not linked to her email address, nor has she posted under that screen name since she deleted the account,” court spokesperson Al Baker said in a statement. “Rather, it represents the reconstitution, last April, and manipulation of an account she long ago abandoned.”
It comes after Juan Merchan imposed a gag order in the case on Tuesday, barring Trump from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors in the trial.
It does not bar comments about Juan Merchan or his family, or criticism of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office is prosecuting Trump.
Merchan granted Bragg’s request for a gag order, citing Trump’s history of “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” remarks about people involved in his various legal cases.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.