President Trump asked the judge, Juan Merchan, who presides over his hush-money case, on Thursday, to recuse himself, citing his adult daughter’s previous campaign work for Vice President Harris, who recently became the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee and is leading Trump in some key polls.

“Your Honor’s daughter has a long-standing relationship with Harris, including work for political campaigns,” Trump’s defense attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote in a pre-motion letter filed on Thursday. “She has obtained — and stands to obtain in the future — extensive financial, professional, and personal benefits from her relationship with Harris.”  

The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, is an executive at the digital agency Authentic, and has done campaign work for some of Trump’s most devout adversaries, including Ms. Harris and Representative Adam Schiff, who’s favored to win Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat in November. Ms. Merchan “was the top vendor for Harris’s prior presidential campaign, based on disbursements of nearly $5 million,” the defense wrote and “made tens of millions of dollars by helping other politicians disseminate political advertisements based on this case.”   

Furthermore, the attorneys write that after deciding to run for president, “Harris immediately framed her candidacy with a specific false reference to this case as a contest of ‘prosecutor vs. convicted felon.’” 

This is the third time Trump’s lawyers have asked Judge Merchan to recuse himself. The judge rejected the previous requests, asserting that he had consulted with New York’s Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics and that his daughter’s work as a political consultant did not impact his impartiality and ability to judge the case.  

In Judge Merchan’s courtroom in May, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, making him the first former president in the history of America with a felony conviction. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, had charged the 45th president with falsification of business records in a scheme to interfere with the 2016 election. At the heart of the case was a $130,000 hush-money payment that Trump’s then personal attorney, Michael Cohen, made to Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, in 2016 to buy her silence about her claim that she had a single sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe in 2006. The prosecution accused Trump of directing Cohen to wire the money to Ms. Clifford and then disguising his reimbursement to Cohen as a legal fee. Trump denies all charges and says he never had sex with Ms. Clifford. 

The judge moved the sentencing, which was originally scheduled to take place on July 11, to September 18, giving him time to review Trump’s petition to dismiss the case in light of the historic Supreme Court decision a month ago on presidential immunity. Both parties, defense and prosecution, have submitted their arguments, and the judge said he would review the matter and decide by September 6 whether or not the Supreme Court ruling makes Trump immune to the hush-money case charges.   

But now Trump’s attorneys are again focusing their fire on Judge Merchan, requesting that “the Court address the actual conflict and appearances of impropriety by recusing itself prior to the resolution of the pending Presidential immunity motion.” 

“Regardless of intent, decisions by Your Honor on the pending Presidential immunity motion and at any sentencing would benefit not only Harris but also the professional aspirations and financial status of Your Honor’s daughter and Authentic—all in a manner consistent with the prohibited political contributions by Your Honor that led to a caution from the Commission on Judicial Conduct,” the defense attorneys wrote.

The “prohibited political contributions” the defense references was a $35 donation to President’s Biden’s 2020 campaign made by Judge Merchan before he became engaged in Trump’s hush-money case. Ethics rules strictly prohibit judges from making any political donations. The complaint against judge Merchan was reviewed and he was issued a warning, but able to remain on the case. 

In their letter, defense attorneys also address the “unjust and unconstitutional” gag order, issued by Judge Merchan against the former president, which prevents him “from responding fully” to the “inaccurate attack” that the presidential election is a battle between a former prosecutor and a felon.   

Also on Thursday, a New York appeals court denied President Trump’s request to dismiss the restriction prior to the sentencing date.  “The fair administration of justice necessarily includes sentencing, which is a critical stage of the criminal proceeding,” a panel of five judges from the Appellate Division First Department wrote in their decision. 

Trump’s defense team had asked the appeals court to remove the gag order, arguing that with the conclusion of the trial, the gag order was no longer necessary. 

On March 26, two weeks before the historic trial began, Judge Merchan issued a limited gag order on Trump, prohibiting him from “making or directing others to make” public statements about witnesses, jurors, counsel, court staff and their family members. It did not include the judge himself nor the district attorney, nor their families. 

But on April 1, the judge extended the gag order to protect his own family members and those of the district attorney, after Trump verbally attacked Loren Merchan, for her previous campaign work. He accused her of maintaining an X account with a profile picture that showed Trump behind bars. Court officials say she hadn’t used the account in years and that a mysterious third party was operating it. The account profile pic was mysteriously updated with a childhood photo of Ms. Harris.

Despite the gag order, Trump continued to make public statements and was consequently held in contempt of court. Judge Merchan found that he violated the gag order on ten instances during and before the trial. He fined the former president $1,000 for each violation with a total sum of $10,000. He also threatened to jail Trump if “necessary and appropriate” should he disrespect the order again.

“Your Honor has insisted on maintaining an unconstitutional Gag Order, backed by threats of imprisonment made during the trial,” the defense attorneys wrote in their letter on Thursday.   

Trump’s appeal of the gag order and the fines was already denied by the appeals court in April. New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, refused to hear the case because it lacked a “substantial constitutional question,” the court decided.

After the trial had ended, the defense team implored the judge to remove the gag order, writing, “Now that the trial is concluded, the concerns articulated by the government and the Court do not justify continued restrictions on the First Amendment rights.” 

In a victory for the defense, Judge Merchan adjusted the gag order. He lifted the restrictions related to jurors and witnesses, but left intact the portion of the gag order that prevents Trump from making statements about court staff, prosecutors and their families. He also upheld a separate order prohibiting the disclosure of personal juror information, and Trump from publicly attacking jurors by name, since there is “ample evidence to justify continued concern for the jurors,” Judge Merchan wrote.

On Thursday, the appeals court agreed with Judge Merchan that the violent threats against the district attorney’s office and trial participants, which continue even after the trial has ended, pose a significant danger.       

“Contrary to petitioner’s contentions, the People’s evidentiary submissions in opposition to his motion in Supreme Court demonstrate that threats received by District Attorney staff after the jury verdict continued to pose a significant and imminent threat,” the appeals court ruled and found the defense’s arguments “unavailing.” 

For now the gag order remains in place until sentencing, if the case is not dismissed before. 

In a separate filing, also released on Thursday, the defense submitted further support for their motion to dismiss the hush-money verdict and the entire indictment, which would prevent prosecutors from trying the case again, based on the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity. 

“In this case, a politically motivated district attorney violated that immunity by using official-acts evidence in grand jury proceedings and at trial. Therefore, the case must be dismissed, and the jury’s verdicts must be vacated,”  Trump’s attorneys wrote.  

Last week, Mr. Bragg’s office responded to Trump’s first motion, arguing that Trump’s immunity claim was baseless because his actions in the hush-money case were not “official” and only official acts, which are related to presidential duties, are immune from prosecution. 

Judge Merchan must now not only decide if Trump is in fact immune to Mr. Bragg’s charges but ask himself, if he is able to judge the matter impartially.