With just two weeks to trial, attorneys for former President Donald Trump are renewing their efforts to request a judge’s recusal after clashing over a gag order.
On April 1, the defense filed a pre-motion letter seeking leave from the court to file a motion for recusal, citing “changed circumstances and newly discovered evidence.”
With the trial date fast approaching, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan had required parties to submit pre-motion letters to obtain permission before filing any motions.
The recusal request came after President Trump’s comments that the judge and his daughter were partisan and “Trump-hating,” leading the judge to recently allow prosecutors to file a motion asking that the gag order on President Trump be “clarified,” in the prosecution’s words, or “expanded” according to the defense, to cover the judge.
New Reasons for Recusal
Justice Merchan has already declined to recuse himself from the case.Last year, defense attorneys argued he had made small-dollar contributions to Democrat campaigns, that his daughter Loren Merchan, who heads a political marketing firm, had represented President Trump’s political opponents, and that the judge allegedly had a role in encouraging former Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg to cooperate against President Trump in a separate case.
But the judge recently gave a media interview about the case, which the defense argued is improper.
The defense asserts this would have taken place on March 10, while the judge had a pre-motion letter before him requesting an adjournment of the upcoming trial based on the amount of publicity the case was getting. Defense attorneys argued the judge did not address his own interview in responding to the request and, in fact, did not give the defense leave to file that motion until March 25.
“According to reports of the interview, Your Honor indicated that the Court ‘wouldn’t talk about the case,’ but did so anyway,” the defense argued.
Justice Merchan had told a reporter that getting ready for the Trump case was “intense” and that he was striving “to make sure that I’ve done everything I could to be prepared and to make sure that we dispense justice.”
“There’s no agenda here,” he told the Associated Press. “We want to follow the law. We want justice to be done.”
Gag Order Debate Highlights Need for Recusal, Say Attorneys
Last year, Justice Merchan had also declined to issue a gag order, instead verbally warning the parties against making inflammatory statements about the case.Recently, the judge found that with the trial approaching, “risk” based on President Trump’s speech was “paramount” and warranted such an order.
Basing his order off a gag order issued against President Trump in federal court, Justice Merchan prohibited President Trump from making statements about jurors and potential jurors, witnesses and likely witnesses, and court personnel and counsel and staff, as well as their families, such as it relates to the case and can be taken to seek to interfere with the proceedings.
The public had taken the gag order to exclude Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Justice Merchan, and thus their families, as noted in most media coverage when President Trump made a comment about the judge and his daughter “hating” Trump just a day after the order was issued.
Defense attorneys argued that the two social media posts they cite by President Trump do not meet the high bar of evidence showing a threat that a gag order requires.
They argued that the judge was well aware that President Trump had made social media posts about him or his daughter previously, as they had been submitted by prosecutors.
“The March 26, 2024, opinion indicates that the Court was aware of prior public statements by President Trump relating to Your Honor’s daughter, as relevant to the recusal issue, but the Court did not extend the gag order as the People suggest,” the defense argued in a response in opposition to the prosecutors’ motion. “No violation has occurred, much less a violation of a clearly expressed and unequivocal mandate. Therefore, there is no basis for the disingenuous contempt warning proposed by the People.”
They further argued that the gag order specifies that prohibited statements are ones that “materially interfere with” the case, and the gag order does not prohibit any statement mentioning the listed figures.
Political speech does not materially interfere with the case, the defense argued, and if anything, was a criticism of the judge’s previous decision not to recuse himself.
“President Trump’s social media posts amplified defense arguments regarding the need for recusal that have been, and will continue to be, the subject of motion practice,” the response reads.
