Donald Trump, the first former US president to be convicted of criminal offences in New York at the end of May, once again failed on Wednesday to overturn the judge who is due to hand down his sentence in September.
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Lawyers for the Republican presidential candidate in the November 5 election have again argued that New York District Court Judge Juan Merchan has a daughter with ties to the Democratic Party of President Joe Biden and Vice President and candidate Kamala Harris, and that this fuels “the perception of a conflict of interest.”
Judge Merchan – who had referred his personal case of request for self-recusal to a magistrates’ ethics committee – considered in a ruling delivered on Wednesday that “the applicant’s arguments are nothing less than an unsubstantial repetition of what has already been requested.”
For these reasons, the request is “once again rejected.”
On his Truth Social platform, the billionaire and tribune once again attacked Judge Merchan, who allegedly held himself responsible for “denial and manipulation of the vote” of his voters in the next election on November 5.
Donald Trump was found guilty on May 30 by the Manhattan Criminal Court of 34 offenses of falsifying accounting documents, intended to hide, just before his victory in the November 2016 presidential election, a payment of $130,000 to a porn actress to keep quiet about a sexual relationship she said she had with him in 2006, something the person concerned has always denied.
The first former US president to be convicted of a criminal offence has since been using arguments to reverse the verdict.
His sentence – with a very theoretical risk of a prison sentence – should have been pronounced on July 11, but was postponed thanks to the conservative-majority United States Supreme Court, which on July 1er July expanded the scope of presidential criminal immunity.
The former tenant of the White House (2017-2021) who dreams of returning there believes that his trial should be purely and simply cancelled.
But Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought Mr Trump to trial, argued in late July that there was “no immunity” for “unofficial acts” by a US president.
Judge Merchan is scheduled to rule on September 16 and if he rejects the request for a mistrial, he will pronounce sentence two days later, on the 18th.
