Tim Balk | New York Daily News
Ex-president Donald Trump’s hush cash case is being overseen by a veteran Manhattan Supreme Court jurist who additionally heard the Trump Organization tax fraud trial that in January resulted in a jail time period for Trump confidant and aide Allen Weisselberg.
Justice Juan Merchan, a 60-year-old former prosecutor who was born in Colombia and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens, carries a status as a radical and even-handed decide, and has spent greater than a decade on the bench in New York.
He attended Baruch College and Hofstra University School of Law and labored as an assistant lawyer within the Manhattan district lawyer’s workplace within the Nineties. From 2006 to 2009, he labored as a household courtroom decide. He has served as an performing justice of the state Supreme Court since 2009.
Brendan Tracy, a legal protection lawyer who has appeared earlier than Merchan as a prosecutor, mentioned the decide is well-suited for a high-wattage case just like the one in opposition to Trump.
“He truly strikes me as probably one of the smartest and one of the fairest judges in that courthouse,” Tracy mentioned in an interview.
“He really does give everyone a fair shake,” Tracy added. “I would be just as comfortable trying a case in front him as a defense attorney as I would have been trying a case in front of him as a prosecutor.”
Frank Rothman, a longtime Manhattan protection lawyer who has litigated earlier than Merchan a number of occasions, described him as a “very serious judge” who “runs a tight room.”
And Nicholas Gravante, a lawyer who represented Weisselberg, mentioned in an e-mail that he discovered Merchan “practical, efficient, a real ‘listener,’ well-prepared, always accessible, and a man who kept his word.”
“He was mindful of the role my colleagues and I played as advocates, treating us with the utmost respect both in open court and behind closed doors,” Gravante added.
But Trump, who has lashed out repeatedly in opposition to Merchan, has targeted on Weisselberg’s case in harangues of the decide. Merchan sentenced Weisselberg, the previous chief monetary officer of the Trump Organization, to 5 months in jail after Weisselberg pleaded responsible to tax fraud.
In a publish on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump mentioned with out proof that Merchan was “hand picked” by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to preside over his hush cash case, and claimed the decide “railroaded” Weisselberg.
In truth, Merchan was randomly assigned to the investigative grand jury that indicted Trump and thus to his courtroom case.
Trump additionally wrote that the decide had handled his firm “viciously” within the tax fraud case that resulted within the conviction final 12 months of the Trump Organization, the previous president’s household actual property enterprise.
Trump has saved a few of his sharpest barbs for Bragg in latest days, but additionally continued to lash out in opposition to the decide on Tuesday forward of his arraignment, writing on social media that Merchan is “highly partisan” and an “unfair disaster.”
Trump has a protracted historical past of focusing on the legitimacy of judges listening to instances linked to him. His legal professionals within the historic case — Trump is the primary former American president to be indicted — have taken a unique tone on Merchan.
“I have no issue with this judge whatsoever,” Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, instructed CNN on Sunday. “He has a very good reputation.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”