National NewsTrump Case Judge in New York Declines to Step AsideNEW YORK — The New York judge presiding over the criminal case against Donald Trump in Manhattan has declined to remove himself from the proceedings, a loss for the former president as he anticipates a potential fourth indictment this week.
Posted 11:25 p.m. Aug 14, 2023 — Updated 11:26 p.m. Aug 14, 2023By Jonah E. Bromwich, New York TimesNEW YORK — The New York judge presiding over the criminal case against Donald Trump in Manhattan has declined to remove himself from the proceedings, a loss for the former president as he anticipates a potential fourth indictment this week.
Trump was charged with 34 felonies in March in a case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. The district attorney, Alvin Bragg, accused Trump of falsifying records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star that was made during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In late May, Trump’s lawyers asked the judge, Juan M. Merchan, to recuse himself from the case. They argued that he should do so for three reasons.
They noted that, during the 2020 presidential campaign, Merchan had donated $15 to Trump’s opponent, Joe Biden, raising the potential appearance of bias.
They also claimed that while presiding over a criminal case against Trump’s company in 2022, Merchan had encouraged Trump’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, to cooperate against his former boss.
Finally, they argued that the judge’s daughter, the president and chief operating officer of a digital marketing agency that works with Democratic candidates, stood to benefit financially from decisions Merchan made.
The judge tersely rejected all of those arguments in a decision dated Aug. 11 and released Monday. The outcome, though widely anticipated, marked more bad news for Trump, soon after he was indicted by federal prosecutors who accused him of working to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election. It also came at the beginning of a week during which he was expected to be indicted yet again, this time by a state prosecutor in Georgia, on charges stemming from his efforts to disrupt the election results there.
A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, which had opposed the recusal effort, declined to comment, as did one of Trump’s lawyers, Susan R. Necheles, who along with Todd Blanche, filed the recusal motion.
Merchan relied in part on the guidance of a state advisory committee on judicial ethics, which he had questioned about the donations and his daughter’s position.
The committee determined that his impartiality could not “reasonably be questioned” based on “de minimus political contributions made more than two years ago” or his daughter’s interests, given that it did not appear that they could be substantially affected by the proceedings.
Following that guidance, Merchan wrote that “the donations at issue are self-evident and require no further clarification.”
And he wrote that Trump had “failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic reasons for recusal to be appropriate, much less required” because of his daughter’s job.
He wrote that the arguments pertaining to Weisselberg duplicated an unsuccessful attempt to push for a recusal during the trial of Trump’s company and that allegations made by Necheles were “inaccurate.”
Merchan, a former prosecutor, has experience with Trump’s legal tactics and those of his associates. Along with presiding over the trial of Trump’s company last year — which resulted in a conviction on all 17 counts — the judge is also overseeing the case against Steve Bannon, a longtime adviser to Trump who is accused of having defrauded donors who sought to help construct a southern border wall.
Trump is scheduled to go to trial in Manhattan in March of next year, though Bragg has signaled that he would be open to changing that date if other prosecutors who have brought cases against the former president asked him to do so. In a radio interview last month, the district attorney said that he would not “sit on ceremony” despite having brought the first indictment against Trump. If “our trial judge is reached out to by another judge, we’ll obviously consider everything in its totality,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.Suggest A CorrectionCopyright 2026 New York Times News Service. All rights reserved.
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