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© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Decide Juan Merchan presides in the course of the Trump Group’s prison tax trial in Manhattan Felony Court docket, New York Metropolis, U.S., November 15, 2022 on this courtroom sketch. REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg
By Tom Hals
(Reuters) – When Donald Trump walks into Justice Juan Merchan’s courtroom on Tuesday to face prison expenses, it will likely be a primary for a former U.S. president however acquainted territory for the veteran choose who serves on Manhattan’s prison court docket.
Merchan final 12 months oversaw a prison trial of the Trump Group that ended with the true property firm convicted by a jury of tax fraud and hit with fines, whereas considered one of its longtime executives, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded responsible and was despatched to jail.
Trump is anticipated to be arraigned earlier than Merchan on Tuesday following a grand jury investigation into hush cash paid to porn star Stormy Daniels within the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The grand jury has indicted Trump, although the particular expenses haven’t been publicly disclosed.
Susan Necheles, a Trump legal professional, advised Reuters the previous president will plead not responsible.
Merchan sentenced the Trump Group to pay $1.6 million after jurors convicted the corporate in December. The choose additionally sentenced Weisselberg, who lengthy served as an govt beneath Trump however was the prosecution’s star witness within the trial, to 5 months of incarceration.
On Friday, Trump, who was not charged in his firm’s case, lashed out at Merchan on his Fact Social platform.
“The Decide ‘assigned’ to my Witch Hunt Case, a ‘Case’ that has NEVER BEEN CHARGED BEFORE, HATES ME,” wrote Trump, who has launched a marketing campaign to regain the presidency in 2024. “He sturdy armed Allen, which a choose is just not allowed to do, & handled my firms, which did not ‘plead,’ VICIOUSLY.”
Merchan didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The Trump Group trial is just not Merchan’s solely latest encounter with individuals near the previous president. Merchan is also presiding over a prison case involving former Trump marketing campaign and White Home adviser Steve Bannon, who has pleaded not responsible to expenses of cash laundering, conspiracy and fraud associated to a nonprofit that raised funds for constructing a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.
Merchan has been a Manhattan prison court docket choose since 2009 after prior stints on the state’s Court docket of Claims, which hears instances towards the state and its companies, and household court docket within the Bronx.
The choose was born in Colombia and moved to america at age 6, rising up in New York Metropolis’s borough of Queens, in response to information studies. Merchan graduated from Baruch Faculty and Hofstra College Faculty of Regulation and commenced his authorized profession in the identical District Legal professional’s workplace that’s now prosecuting Trump.
Merchan presided over the 2012 case of the so-called “Soccer Mother Madam” Anna Gristina, which garnered lurid headlines within the New York media. Gristina was accused of working a high-end brothel out of her Manhattan residence and ultimately pleaded responsible. Gristina sued Merchan in 2021 to unseal information in her case as a part of an effort to vacate her document. Her case was dismissed, in response to court docket information.
In 2011, Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer of New York advisable that President Barack Obama nominate Merchan for a federal judgeship in Brooklyn, saying he would have been the primary Colombian-born federal choose, in response to the New York Regulation Journal. Merchan was not nominated for the submit.
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