Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filed a misconduct complaint against Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money trial.
The complaint demands an investigation to determine if the assignment of Merchan was truly “random.”
Stefanik notes in the complaint that Merchan is a “Democratic Party donor” and yet presides over several Trump cases.
“Acting Justice Merchan currently presides over the criminal case against President Trump brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg,” the representative wrote. “Acting Justice Merchan also presided over the criminal trial against the Trump Organization and will be presiding over the criminal trial of Steve Bannon, a senior advisor in President Trump’s White House and a prominent advocate for President Trump.”
The odds that Merchan would preside over three cases are “infinitesimally small,” Stefanik stated.
“One cannot help but suspect that the ‘random selection’ at work in the assignment of Acting Justice Merchan, a Democrat Party donor, to these cases involving prominent Republicans, is in fact not random at all,” she added. “The simple answer to why Acting Justice Merchan has been assigned to these cases would seem to be that whoever made the assignment intentionally selected Acting Justice Merchan to handle them to increase the chance that Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, and Steven Bannon would ultimately be convicted.”
She called for “both the Commission and the Inspector General investigate this anomaly to determine whether the required random selection process was in fact followed in the assignment of these criminal cases to Acting Justice Merchan.”
Last month, Stefanik filed an ethics complaint against Special Counsel Jack Smith.
The representative alleged in the complaint that Smith abused the “resources of the federal government to unlawfully interfere with the 2024 presidential election” and has “violated long-standing, explicit Justice Department policy” by rushing to “trial the federal January 6th case against President Trump.”
“Further, Jack Smith’s repeated violations of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia’s stay of proceedings are a lawless breach of trial ethics and lawyerly conduct,” she wrote. “Jack Smith’s actions brought disrepute to the Justice Department and the federal government as a whole, and he should face discipline appropriately.”
