Judge Merchan And The Four Most Glaring Examples Of Political Bias In The Trump ‘Hush Money’ Case

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “hush money” case against former President Donald Trump has largely been panned by objective legal scholars due to Bragg’s use of novel legal theories and failure to identify an underlying crime.

The case has also been under the microscope due to numerous examples of political bias from the judge overseeing the case, D.A. Bragg and his team, as well as “star witness” Michael Cohen.

Judge Juan Merchan

Judge Juan Merchan’s extensive connections to Democrat causes have been under the microscope throughout the duration of the New York City case.

In 2020, the Manhattan judge donated to then-candidate Biden’s presidential election campaign. He also donated to the Progressive Turnout Project, a group that works to increase Democrat turnout, and to the Stop Republicans PAC during the 2020 election cycle.

While the judge’s pro-Biden and anti-Republican stances were cited by Trump’s legal teams as reasons why Merchan should recuse himself, the extensive political connections of his daughter, Loren, have generated the most controversy. Loren Merchan is a prominent Democrat political consultant who has raised millions of dollars for Democrat campaigns, some of which have used the prosecutions of former President Trump as fundraising selling points.

Authentic Campaigns, the consulting firm where Merchan works, boasts a number of the nation’s most prominent Democrats as clients. This includes U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and the Biden-Harris campaign, among dozens of others.

Authentic Campaigns also lists U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who has bragged about helping “star witness” Michael Cohen prepare for his testimony against Trump, as a client.

Some of the most prominent clients of Authentic Campaigns

Despite the staggering political connections, Merchan refused to recuse himself from the case, citing findings from the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics, which he consulted prior to Trump’s recusal request. “We see nothing in the inquiry to suggest that the outcome of the case could have any effect on the judge’s relative, the relative’s business, or any of their interests,” the advisory committee wrote.

Instead of recusing himself, Merchan slapped the former president with a gag order that has prevented him from commenting on both the judge and his daughter’s political leanings. Trump was fined thousands of dollars for violating the gag order and was threatened with jail for future offenses throughout the duration of the trial.

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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg

The far-left district attorney’s relentless pursuit of a case against former President Trump represents a vast deviation from the way he generally conducts his business. In 2022, Bragg’s office downgraded 52% of felony cases to misdemeanors, according to a report from the New York Post. This represented a massive increase from 39% in all of 2019.

Bragg’s office has reduced or dropped charges against scores of repeat offenders and those accused of violent crime since taking office in 2021.

In the Trump case, Bragg deviated from his usual strategy in a dramatic way. He first extended the statute of limitations for misdemeanor bookkeeping violations using COVID-era policies. He then upgraded the charges to felonies, alleging that Trump falsified business in order to conceal another crime.

Throughout the entire trial, Bragg’s office has still not explained the other crime Trump is alleged to have committed. This does not matter, however, according to jury instructions from Judge Merchan that explain how jurors do not need to agree on the underlying crime in order to convict.

Bragg also campaigned on investigating Trump prior to taking office. Bragg not only kept his word, he based his entire indictment around hush money payments made to former adult film star Stormy Daniels despite the fact that both the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice declined to bring charges against Trump after conducting their own respective investigations on the matter.

“Let’s talk about what’s waiting for the new D.A. The docket — we know there’s a Trump investigation. I have investigated Trump and his children… I also sued the Trump Administration more than 100 times,” Bragg said on the campaign trail. He frequently flaunted his past experiences with bringing cases against Trump and his family as a selling point when running for his current office.

Lead Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo 

In December 2022, Bragg hired former Biden DOJ official Matthew Colangelo to focus on prosecuting white collar crimes in Manhattan. He was immediately assigned to the Trump case, which he has prosecuted over the last month.

Colangelo was not just any DOJ employee by the time he left to join Bragg’s office. Colangelo served as Acting Associate Attorney General in the early days of the Biden Administration, the third most senior position in the Department of Justice.

Colangelo also worked for New York Attorney Letitia James, who launched the highly questionable investigation into Trump surrounding alleged overvaluing of his properties.

In 2018, he was paid for his consulting services to the Democratic National Committee. FEC records show that the DNC Services Corp/Democratic National Committee paid Colangelo two times on January 31, 2018 for a total of $12,000.

At the time, Colangelo was serving in then-New York Attorney General Eric Scheiderman’s office as the deputy attorney general for social justice. He assumed the role after Bragg, who was appointed as chief deputy attorney general at the time.

Just months after Colangelo received the payments from the DNC and joined the New York AG’s office, then-acting New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation.

Colangelo (right) chats with then-Secretary of Labor Tom Perez in 2013. Perez went on to become DNC chair.

Colangelo is far from the only member of Bragg’s team who has demonstrated clear political bias.

Susan Hoffinger — a prosecutor with Bragg’s office who led the questioning of former adult film star Stormy Daniels — has also donated to a number of left-wing causes. According to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Fox News, Hoffinger donated to Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020.

In total, Hoffinger donated $500 to the president’s election campaign in 2020. This includes a donation of $250 in February, and another donation of $250 in March of that year.

In addition, the prosecutor also donated more than $900 to ActBlue, a fundraising organization that goes towards Democratic candidates and progressive causes, during the 2020 election cycle.
Hoffinger also donated to a number of additional Democrat candidates and causes in 2018 and 2020. She was hired by Bragg after the contributions had been made in 2022.

Michael Cohen

Disgraced lawyer and convicted perjurer Michael Cohen served as Bragg’s “star witness” in the case, though his testimony was widely viewed as underwhelming.

By Cohen’s own admission, he has told multiple lies in court, has lied to the media, and has faced criminal charges for lying to Congress. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 in two federal cases to a handful of crimes, including campaign-finance violations and making false statements to Congress. He was ultimately sentenced to three years in prison.

Soon after pleading guilty in the cases, Cohen claimed that he hadn’t committed tax evasion despite telling U.S. District Judge William Pauley that he had. When Cohen asked to have his sentence reduced, federal prosecutors said they had “substantial concerns about Cohen’s credibility as a witness,” according to a report from Politico.

When testifying in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case last year, Cohen once again claimed that he did not commit campaign finance violations, this time under oath. He also stated that he had lied to the judge when pleading guilty.

“So, sir, you lied at the time — you lied more than once in federal court, correct?” Trump lawyer Alina Habba asked Cohen, to which he replied, “correct.”

Cohen had also made a number of posts that confirmed his anti-Trump bias prior to the start of the trial. In April, Cohen labeled Trump a “dictator do*che bag” and said that Trump “belongs in a cage like a fu*king animal.

“We went right to this issue of you having this sort of all-consuming personal hatred and a vested interest in this case,” noted CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig. CNN senior political analyst Gloria Borger elaborated that the defense is attempting to reveal “the real Michael Cohen. The Michael Cohen who has been on the stand before, full of remorse, a good guy, that’s not Michael Cohen.”

Despite Cohen’s total lack of credibility, Bragg still used him as the “star witness” in the case against Trump. His testimony was widely viewed as a disaster by a number of legal analysts, however.

“I think it’s devastating. Absolutely,” CNN host Anderson Cooper said in response to Cohen’s testimony. “If I were a juror in this case watching that, I would think this guy is making it up as he’s going along, or or he’s making that this particular story up.”

Cohen was also allowed to tell the jury about his understanding of campaign finance violations while Judge Merchan prohibited former FEC Bradley Smith from giving his full testimony in Trump’s defense.

“The Federal Election Campaign Act is very complex. Even Antonin Scalia – a pretty smart guy, even if you hate him – once said ‘this [campaign finance] law is so intricate that I can’t figure it out.’ Picture a jury in a product liability case trying to figure out if a complex machine was negligently designed, based only on a boilerplate recitation of the general definition of ‘negligence.’ They’d be lost without knowing technology & industry norms,” Smith said.

In a follow-up post, Smith noted that Bragg’s “star witness” Michael Cohen was able to go “on at length about whether and how his activity violated” the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), he was barred from going beyond the basics. This, according to smith, has “effectively” created a situation where the jury is hearing about FECA law from Michael Cohen.

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