“He should be recused from living,” one Trump supporter wrote of Merchan in an April 14 post on Truth Social. That post and other calls for violence cited in this story were made anonymously.
Merchan, 61, has served on the criminal bench since 2009. He grew up in the New York borough of Queens, also Trump’s boyhood home, and began his career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.
In 2022, Merchan presided over a tax fraud conviction for Trump’s business, ordering his company to pay a $1.6 million fine. Last year he sentenced Trump’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, to five months in jail for tax fraud.
Pictures of Merchan’s daughter have featured regularly on Truth Social. Some mocked her physical appearance and called for her arrest. On one website, an avowed white supremacist published personal information about both Merchan and his daughter, including home addresses and the judge’s phone number.
Last June, the New York Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics ruled that Merchan’s “impartiality cannot reasonably be questioned” based on his daughter’s work for Democratic campaigns.
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