When Donald Trump steps into Justice Juan Merchan’s courtroom on Tuesday to encounter criminal accusations, it will be a first for a former US president but familiar territory for the veteran judge who serves on Manhattan’s criminal court.
Merchan last year led a criminal trial of the Trump Organization that ended with the real estate company sentenced by a jury of tax fraud and struck with fines, while one of its longtime executives, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty and was sent to prison.
Trump is expected to stand before Merchan on Tuesday following a grand jury investigation into hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. The grand jury has indicted Trump, though the specific charges have not been publicly unlocked.
Susan Necheles, a Trump attorney, told Reuters the former president will plead not guilty.
Merchan sentenced the Trump Organization to pay $1.6 million after jurors sentenced the company in December. The judge also sentenced Weisselberg, who long served as an executive under Trump but was the prosecution’s star witness in the trial, to five months of imprisonment.
On Friday, Trump, who was not charged in his firm’s case, criticize Merchan on his Truth Social platform.
The Judge ‘assigned’ to my Witch Hunt Case, a ‘Case’ that has NEVER BEEN CHARGED BEFORE, HATES ME. He strong-armed Allen, which a judge is not allowed to do, & treated my companies, which didn’t ‘plead,’ VICIOUSLY.”
Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Merchan did not reply to a request for comment.
The Trump Organization trial is not Merchan’s only recent encounter with the former president’s allies. Merchan also is presiding over a criminal lawsuit involving former Trump campaign and White House adviser Steve Bannon, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering, conspiracy, and fraud related to a nonprofit that raised funds for building a wall on the US border with Mexico.
Merchan has been a Manhattan criminal court judge since 2009 after prior stints on the state’s Court of Claims, which hears cases against the state and its agencies, and family court in the Bronx.
Merchan was born in Columbia and then moved to the United States at 6, growing up in New York City’s borough of Queens, according to news reports. He graduated from Baruch College and Hofstra University School of Law and started his lawful career in the same District Attorney’s office that is now indicting Trump.
Merchan oversaw the 2012 case of the so-called “Soccer Mom Madam” Anna Gristina. Gristina was charged with running a high-end brothel out of her Manhattan apartment and eventually pleaded guilty. Gristina sued Merchan in 2021 to unseal records in her case as part of an effort to clear her record. Her case was dismissed, according to court records.
In 2011, Democratic US Senator Charles Schumer of New York suggested that President Barack Obama nominate Merchant for a federal judgeship in Brooklyn, saying he would have been the first Colombian-born federal judge, according to the New York Law Journal. Merchan was not nominated for the post.
