by WorldTribune Staff, May 29, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
If judges are randomly assigned criminal cases in New York, what are the odds that the same judge would be assigned to two Trump-related cases?
Pretty slim.
And three Trump related cases?
Pretty much impossible.
Yet Judge Juan Merchan, who has donated to Democrat politicians including Joe Biden, was assigned not only to the current Trump hush money case, but to a Trump Organization case and a case involving former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon.
In filing a complaint of “potential misconduct” against Merchan, New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik said there appears to be nothing random in the judge being assigned to the cases.
“The potential misconduct pertains to the repeated assignment of Acting Justice Juan Merchan, a Democrat Party donor, to criminal cases related to President Donald J. Trump and his allies,” Stefanik wrote in a letter Tuesday.
She added that Judge Merchan “also presided over the criminal trial against the Trump Organization and will be presiding over the criminal trial of Steve Bannon.”
“One cannot help but suspect that the ‘random selection’ at work in the assignment of Acting Justice Merchan, a Democrat Party donor, to these cases involving prominent Republicans, is in fact not random at all,” Stefanik added.
Stefanik noted in her letter that there are about three dozen judges eligible to oversee the Trump-related cases, but Judge Merchan, who is an acting justice, was selected for three of the cases related to the former president.
“If justices were indeed being randomly assigned in the Criminal Term, the probability of two specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is quite low, and the probability of three specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is infinitesimally small. And yet, we see Acting Justice Merchan on all three cases,” Stefanik wrote.
Her letter also made reference to Judge Merchan’s donations to the Democrat Party and Biden, while adding that Merchan’s daughter is in charge of a consulting company that works with Democrat officials.
Meanwhile, Trump has not publicly signaled who he might select as his 2024 running mate, but there has been media-driven speculation that Stefanik might be vying for the spot. She previously said that she would be “honored” to serve in a Trump administration “in any capacity.”
Trump has said he will not select his running mate before the Republican National Convention in July.
Rep. Stefanik’s complaint: Selection of Acting Judge Merchan was ‘not random at all’ added by Editor Two on
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