Judge Juan M. Merchan poses in his chambers in New York on March 14, 2024.

Seth Wenig/AP

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Seth Wenig/AP

Judge Juan M. Merchan poses in his chambers in New York on March 14, 2024.

Seth Wenig/AP

NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump is demanding a brand new decide simply days earlier than his hush-money prison trial is ready to start, rehashing longstanding grievances with the present decide in a long-shot, eleventh-hour bid to disrupt and delay the case.

Trump’s legal professionals — echoing his current social media complaints — urged Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan to step except for the case, alleging bias and a battle of curiosity as a result of his daughter is a Democratic political advisor. The decide rejected the same request final August.

In courtroom papers made public Friday, Trump’s legal professionals stated it’s improper for Merchan “to preside over these proceedings while Ms. Merchan benefits, financially and reputationally, from the manner in which this case is interfering” with Trump’s marketing campaign because the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

The trial is scheduled to start April 15. It is the primary of Trump’s 4 prison instances scheduled to go to trial and could be the first-ever prison trial of a former president.

Merchan did not instantly rule. The choice is totally as much as him. If he had been to exit, it will throw the trial schedule into disarray, giving Trump a long-sought postponement whereas a brand new decide will get in control.

Messages searching for remark had been left for a courtroom spokesperson and for Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan. The Manhattan district legal professional’s workplace stated it sees no cause for Merchan to step apart.

The protection’s claims that Loren Merchan is making the most of her father’s choices require “multiple attenuated factual leaps here that undercut any direct connection” between her agency and this case, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wrote in a letter to the decide.

“This daisy chain of innuendos is a far cry from evidence” that Judge Merchan has a direct, private or monetary curiosity in reaching a specific conclusion, Colangelo wrote.

Loren Merchan is president of Authentic Campaigns, which has collected at the least $70 million in funds from Democratic candidates and causes since she helped discovered the corporate in 2018, data present.

The agency’s previous purchasers embody President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Senate Majority PAC, a big-spending political committee affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Senate Majority PAC has paid Authentic Campaigns $15.2 million, in accordance with marketing campaign finance disclosures.

In a separate growth Friday, Merchan blocked Trump’s legal professionals from forcing NBC to supply them with supplies associated to its current documentary about porn actor Stormy Daniels, a key prosecution witness. He dominated that the protection’s subpoena was “the very definition of a fishing expedition” and did not meet a authorized burden for requiring a information group to supply entry to its notes and paperwork.

On Wednesday, Merchan rejected the presumptive Republican nominee’s request to delay the trial till the Supreme Court guidelines on presidential immunity claims he raised in one other of his prison instances. The decide has but to rule on one other protection delay request — this one alleging he will not get a good trial due to “prejudicial media coverage.”

The hush cash case facilities on allegations that Trump falsified his firm’s data to cover the character of funds to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who helped Trump bury unfavorable tales throughout his 2016 marketing campaign. Among different issues, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.

Trump pleaded not responsible final yr to 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise data. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels. His legal professionals argue the funds to Cohen had been reputable authorized bills.

Trump foreshadowed his legal professionals’ renewed push to have Merchan exit the case with posts assailing the decide and his daughter final week on his Truth Social platform.

Trump advised, with out proof, that Merchan’s rulings — together with his choice to impose a gag order on Trump — had been swayed by his daughter’s consulting pursuits. He wrongly claimed that she had posted a social media photograph displaying him behind bars. Trump’s assaults on Loren Merchan led the decide to develop the gag order to ban him from making public statements about his household.

“The Judge has to recuse himself immediately, and right the wrong committed by not doing so last year,” Trump wrote on March 27. “If the Biased and Conflicted Judge is allowed to stay on this Sham ‘Case,’ it will be another sad example of our Country becoming a Banana Republic, not the America we used to know and love.”

Trump equally pressed the decide in his Washington, D.C., election interference case to recuse herself, claiming her previous feedback about him known as into query her capability to be truthful. But U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan stated there was no cause for her to step apart.

Merchan’s daughter featured prominently within the protection’s requires his recusal final yr. They additionally seized on a number of small donations the decide made totaling to Democratic causes in the course of the 2020 marketing campaign. They totaled $35, together with $15 to Biden.

Merchan rejected that request, writing final August {that a} state courtroom ethics panel had discovered that Loren Merchan’s work had no bearing on his impartiality. The decide stated he was sure of his “ability to be fair and impartial” and stated Trump’s legal professionals had “failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic reasons for recusal to be appropriate, much less required on these grounds.”

Trump’s legal professionals contend circumstances have now modified, with Trump locked in a rematch in opposition to President Joe Biden, and Democrats — together with purchasers of Loren Merchan’s agency — searching for to capitalize on Trump’s authorized troubles with fundraising emails framed round developments within the hush-money case.

“It would be completely unacceptable to most New Yorkers if the judge presiding over these proceedings had an adult child who worked at WinRed or MAGA Inc.,” Blanche and Necheles wrote, referring to a Republican fundraising platform and a pro-Trump fundraising committee.

In searching for Merchan’s recusal, Trump’s legal professionals additionally took situation together with his choice to present an interview to The Associated Press final month, suggesting he might have violated judicial conduct guidelines, and so they questioned his use of a courtroom spokesperson final week to disclaim Trump’s claims that she had posted the picture of Trump in jail.

In the interview, Merchan advised the AP that he and his employees had been working diligently to organize for the historic first trial of a former president, saying: “There’s no agenda here. We want to follow the law. We want justice to be done.”