Donald Trump is due back in court for his criminal case – this time virtually – after he made history by becoming the first current or former US president to ever be indicted on criminal charges.
The former president will appear via video in Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday 23 May for a hearing where Judge Juan Merchan will personally instruct Mr Trump about the terms of the protective order issued in the case.
The order, issued on 8 May, bars Mr Trump and his attorneys from publishing information in his case and the names of certain Manhattan DA personnel that is not already public once the information is handed over to his legal team.
It even limits Mr Trump’s access to some of the information – with some evidence only to be shared with Mr Trump while he is in the presence of his attorneys and the former president banned from making copies, photographing or transcribing the documents.
While his lawyers and prosecutors in the case must appear in person, Mr Trump can join remotely – avoiding the sensationalism and heightened security when he surrendered to New York authorities back on 4 April for the first court appearance in the unprecedented case.
That day, Mr Trump was arrested and charged with 34 felonies for falsifying business records during the 2016 race for the White House.
Appearing in court before Judge Merchan, he pleaded not guilty to the charges.
But who is the judge presiding over this unprecedented case?
What we know about Judge Merchan
Judge Merchan is currently an acting justice with the New York State Supreme Court – a position he has occupied since 2009.
The Colombia native moved to the US as a child and grew up in Queens, New York City.
He studied at Baruch College and then Hofstra University School of Law before beginning his legal career as a Manhattan assistant district attorney in 1994.
After this, he worked in the State Attorney General’s office and was then appointed to the Bronx Family Court bench in 2006 – before joining the state’s highest court three years later.
This isn’t the judge’s first time overseeing a case involving Mr Trump.
Court sketch of Judge Juan Merchan during deliberations in the Trump Organization’s criminal tax trial
(REUTERS)
Judge Merchan presided over both the tax fraud trial of the Trump Organization and the trial of the organisation’s longtime CFO Allen Weisselberg last year.
In November, Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in prison and five years post-release supervision after pleading guilty to tax fraud charges.
At his sentencing, Judge Merchan slammed Weisselberg for his “offensive” greed and said that he would have handed down a harsher sentence if he hadn’t made an agreement as part of a plea.
“Had I not made the promise, I would be imposing a sentence much greater than that,” he said.
In the Trump Organization’s trial, the judge hit the company with the highest possible fine at its sentencing in January of this year.
Two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization – Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp. — were convicted on 17 counts, including conspiracy, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records, for running a 15-year tax fraud scheme.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to hand down the highest possible fines under the law.
Judge Merchan agreed, fining the entities $1.6m in total.
Besides these cases with ties to Mr Trump, the judge has also dealt with other high-profile cases.
In 2012, the judge presided over the case known as the “Soccer mom madam” where Anna Gristina pleaded guilty to charges of running a Manhattan call girl ring for millionaires.
Trump’s attacks on Judge Merchan
At the arraignment hearing on 4 April, Judge Merchan warned Mr Trump in no uncertain terms to rein in his traditional fiery posts on social media.
“Please refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence or civil unrest,” he told both sides of the case, adding that he would be willing to consider a gag order in future if necessary to protect the trial process.
But hours later, in a televised address from his Florida mansion of Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump was accusing the judge of having a “Trump-hating family” with ties to Kamala Harris.
Those claims were echoed by his children Don Jr and Eric, who tweeted links to Breitbart News and The Gateway Pundit focusing on the Democrat-leaning political activities of Judge Merchan’s 34-year-old daughter Loren Merchan. Critics accused them of attempting to intimidate the judge and his family.
“I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family, whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris, and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign – and a lot of it,” Mr Trump said.
Eric Trump claimed in a now-deleted tweet that “they are all hand-picked. It is all pre-arranged”, while Don Jr called it a “hand-picked show trial”.
According to ABC News, Ms Merchan did indeed work for Ms Harris’ presidential campaign in 2019, and is now president of a progressive fundraising agency that reportedly took in more than $2m from the Biden campaign.
Federal Election Commission records also show a Juan Merchan, whose occupation is listed as “judge”, donating a total of $35 to the Democrat fundraising organisation ActBlue in 2020, with one donation described as “earmarked for ‘STOP REPUBLICANS’”.
Commentators were sharply divided about the Trump family’s rhetoric, with some arguing that Ms Merchan’s work was a legitimate topic of debate.
However, Glenn Kessler, a fact-checker for The Washington Post, claimed that the points about Ms Merchan were “totally irrelevant and obviously intended to intimidate”.
CNN correspondent John King said: “It is not relevant. She’s an individual adult… they try to intimidate, they attack, and they put at risk people who should not be dragged into this process…
“Donald Trump is presumed innocent. If he can beat these charges, good for him. The judge’s daughter has nothing to do with this, but this is what [the Trump family] do. This is how they have taken this country off the rails and outside the norms.”
Former Trump aide Alissa Farah Griffin was also unimpressed, calling the ex-president’s remarks “disgraceful”.
Stephen Gillers, a judicial ethics expert at New York University, told PolitiFact that the political views of a judge’s children were not considered a basis for the judge to recuse themselves.