President Trump questioned the impartiality of the Manhattan judge who is presiding over his upcoming hush-money trial, and lashed out against the judge’s adult daughter, one day after the judge in question, Juan Merchan, issued a gag order against him. 

“So, let me get this straight,” Mr. Trump wrote in a three part-long post on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Wednesday. “The Judge’s daughter is allowed to post pictures of her ‘dream’ of putting me in jail … the Judge can violate our Laws and Constitution at every turn, but I am not allowed to talk about the attacks against me, and the Lunatics trying to destroy my life, and prevent me from winning the 2024 Presidential Election, which I am dominating?” 

The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, is a Democratic political consultant, who worked as a president and partner for Authentic Campaigns. Her clients included Vice President Kamala Harris and Congressman Adam Schiff. Her firm also campaigned for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and President Biden, according to The Hill and the Associated Press.  

Mr. Trump’s allegation that Ms. Merchan had posted pictures of him in jail came after a vocal Trump supporter, Laura Loomer, posted images on X, formerly Twitter, that she said were from Ms. Merchan’s X account, that showed, as a profile picture, an image of Mr. Trump behind bars. 

A spokesperson for New York State’s court system, however, told the Associated Press that Ms. Merchan had deleted that account more than a year ago, and that someone else appears to have taken over the handle and added the offending picture. 

The same court spokesperson told The Daily Beast Wednesday evening that Mr. Trump’s “attacks on the daughter” have no “basis in fact.” 

“The X, formerly Twitter, account being attributed to Judge Merchan’s daughter no longer belongs to her since she deleted it approximately a year ago,” the spokesperson, Al Baker, told the Beast. “It is not linked to her email address, nor has she posted under that screenname since she deleted the account.

“Rather, it represents the reconstitution, last April, and manipulation of an account she long ago abandoned.”

Regardless of the questionable origin of the image, Ms. Merchan’s ties to the Democratic party are evident. Last year, Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys asked that the judge recuse himself, based in part on his daughter’s partisan activities, as well as that he donated to the Democrats in 2020. 

Judge Merchan noted that these donations amounted to a mere $35. He further stated that his impartiality was unaffected by his daughter’s work, and that defense attorneys had “failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic reasons for recusal to be appropriate, much less required on these grounds.” 

Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the upcoming presidential election, reiterated his concern in another post on Wednesday. “The Judge has to recuse himself immediately,” he wrote. “If the Biased and Conflicted Judge is allowed to stay on this Sham ‘Case,’ it will be another sad example of our Country becoming a Banana Republic, not the America we used to know and love. These are Election Interfering Witch Hunts. We will crush each one of these Hoaxes, and Make America Great Again!”

As the Sun reported, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Mr. Trump with attempting to conceal an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Bragg alleges that Mr. Trump paid hush money to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, to keep her from publicizing a one-night stand she claims she had with Mr. Trump. The district attorney further accuses Mr. Trump of trying to hide the payment and the extramarital affair from American voters. He is pursuing a novel legal strategy to turn what would normally be a misdemeanor into a felony.

Mr. Trump denies the sexual encounter ever took place and has pleaded innocent to all charges. If found guilty, Mr. Trump could potentially face a prison sentence. Legal experts agree that a punishment of this scope is highly unlikely, since Mr. Trump has no prior convictions, but this is no ordinary case and Mr. Trump, who is deeply unpopular in New York, is no ordinary defendant. 

On Tuesday, the judge imposed a gag order against the former president. The order, which prosecutors had requested, prohibits Mr. Trump from “making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses.” It further prohibits Mr. Trump from commenting on or insulting all counsel, court staff, potential and selected jurors, and family members of the court staff and of counsel. It does not, however, include the district attorney and the judge, nor their family members.  

On his social media platform, Mr. Trump called the gag order, “another illegal, un-American, unConstitutional ‘order,’” and accused the judge of “wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement, including the fact that Crooked Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and their Hacks and Thugs are tracking and following me all across the Country, obsessively trying to persecute me, while everyone knows I have done nothing wrong!” 

During another recent Manhattan trial, the two-and-half months long civil fraud trial, another state judge, Arthur Engoron, also issued a gag order against Mr. Trump, after he mocked his principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, on social media. Judge Engoron fined Mr. Trump twice for a total amount of $15,000 for violating the order. Defense attorneys tried to appeal the ruling, arguing that Mr. Trump had a right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment. But in January, New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, denied the appeal.  

In the latest gag order, Judge Merchan, cited Mr. Trump’s history of “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” remarks about people involved in his legal cases.  

“The freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment,” the judge reasoned, “and the State’s interest in the fair administration of justice are implicated by the relief sought. The balancing of these interests must come with the highest scrutiny.” He found that his narrowly tailored gag order was based on the “uncontested record reflecting the Defendant’s prior extrajudicial statements,” which had established “a sufficient risk to the administration of justice…” 

“Maybe the Judge is such a hater,” Mr. Trump raged in his posts, “because his daughter makes money by working to ‘Get Trump,’ and when he rules against me over and over again, he is making her company, and her, richer and richer. How can this be allowed?” 

The trial will commence with jury selection on April 15th.