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Trump Case Judge in New York Declines to Step Aside

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Trump Case Judge in New York Declines to Step Aside

The New York judge presiding over the criminal case against Donald J. Trump in Manhattan has declined to remove himself from the proceedings, a loss for the former president as he anticipates a potential fourth indictment this week.

Mr. Trump was charged with 34 felonies in March in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, accused Mr. Trump of falsifying records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star that was made during the 2016 presidential campaign.

In late May, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked the judge, Juan M. Merchan, to recuse himself from the case. They argued that he should do so for three reasons.

They noted that, during the 2020 presidential campaign, Justice Merchan had donated $15 to Mr. Trump’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., raising the potential appearance of bias.

They also claimed that while presiding over a criminal case against Mr. Trump’s company in 2022, Justice Merchan had encouraged Mr. Trump’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, to cooperate against his former boss.

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Finally, they argued that the judge’s daughter, the president and chief operating officer of a digital marketing agency that works with Democratic candidates, stood to benefit financially from decisions Justice Merchan made.

The judge tersely rejected all of those arguments in a decision dated Aug. 11 and released on Monday.

The outcome, though widely anticipated, marked more bad news for Mr. Trump, soon after he was indicted by federal prosecutors who accused him of working to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election.

It also came at the beginning of a week during which he was expected to be indicted yet again, this time by a state prosecutor in Georgia, on charges stemming from his efforts to disrupt the election results there.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, which had opposed the recusal effort, declined to comment, as did one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Susan R. Necheles, who, along with Todd Blanche, filed the recusal motion.

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Justice Merchan relied in part on the guidance of a state advisory committee on judicial ethics, which he had questioned about the donations and his daughter’s position.

The committee determined that his impartiality could not “reasonably be questioned” based on “de minimus political contributions made more than two years ago” or his daughter’s interests, given that it did not appear that they could be substantially affected by the proceedings.

Following that guidance, Justice Merchan wrote that “the donations at issue are self-evident and require no further clarification.”

And he wrote that Mr. Trump had “failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic reasons for recusal to be appropriate, much less required” because of his daughter’s job.

He wrote that the arguments pertaining to Mr. Weisselberg duplicated an unsuccessful attempt to push for a recusal during the trial of Mr. Trump’s company and that allegations made by Ms. Necheles were “inaccurate.”

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Justice Merchan, a former prosecutor, has experience with Mr. Trump’s legal tactics and those of his associates.

Along with presiding over the trial of Mr. Trump’s company last year — which resulted in a conviction on all 17 counts — the judge is also overseeing the case against Steve Bannon, a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump who is accused of having defrauded donors who sought to help construct a southern border wall.

Mr. Trump is scheduled to go to trial in Manhattan in March of next year, though Mr. Bragg has signaled that he would be open to changing that date if other prosecutors who have brought cases against the former president asked him to do so.

In a radio interview last month, the district attorney said that he would not “sit on ceremony” despite having brought the first indictment against Mr. Trump.

If “our trial judge is reached out to by another judge, we’ll obviously consider everything in its totality,” he said.

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William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

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New York

Who Are Key Players in the Menendez Case?

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Who Are Key Players in the Menendez Case?

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, are accused of taking part in a wide-ranging, international bribery scheme. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged them with accepting bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from several New Jersey businessmen in exchange for political favors.

Mr. Menendez goes to trial on May 13 with two of the businessmen, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana. Ms. Menendez’s trial was postponed after her lawyers said she had a serious medical condition requiring surgery and a recovery period; it is now expected to start in July. All four have pleaded not guilty.

Defendants

Senator Robert Menendez

New Jersey Senator

First elected to Congress in 1992, Mr. Menendez is now charged with taking bribes of gold, cash and a luxury car in exchange for trying to aid the governments of Egypt and Qatar, and seeking to disrupt separate criminal investigations involving his allies in New Jersey.

After his arrest, he stepped down, as required, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but he has refused calls to resign and left open the possibility that he will run for re-election in November if he is exonerated at trial. This is his second federal bribery trial in seven years. In the earlier case, a jury was unable to reach a verdict and the charges were later dismissed.

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Fred Daibes

New Jersey Real Estate Developer

Mr. Daibes is accused of giving Mr. Menendez furniture, gold and cash. These were bribes, prosecutors say, for Mr. Menendez’s efforts to have unrelated federal bank fraud charges Mr. Daibes faces in New Jersey quashed and for the senator’s help in lining up financing for a stalled real estate project.

Wael Hana

Founder of the IS EG Halal company

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Prosecutors say that Mr. Hana, a United States citizen born in Egypt, helped to arrange meetings with the senator and Egyptian officials that led to a lucrative monopoly for Mr. Hana’s company, IS EG Halal. The company, which certifies that products shipped to Egypt are prepared according to Islamic law, was used to funnel bribes to the Menendezes in exchange for the senator’s s efforts to steer U.S. weapons and aid to Egypt, according to the indictment.

Nadine Menendez

Mr. Menendez’s Wife

Ms. Menendez served as a go-between for Mr. Menendez, Egyptian intelligence officials and men who were seeking political favors from the senator, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say that bribes and messages went through Ms. Menendez to the senator.

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The Co-Operator

Jose Uribe

Former New Jersey insurance broker

Mr. Uribe had been charged with seeking the senator’s help to scuttle state insurance fraud investigations that involved Mr. Uribe’s associates. He pleaded guilty in March and agreed to cooperate with the government, admitting in court that he had given a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz to Ms. Menendez to influence the senator.

The Court

Judge Sidney H. Stein

Presiding Judge

He was appointed by former President Bill Clinton to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1995. Among the more prominent defendants whose cases he has overseen are Jennifer Shah, a “Real Housewives” star sentenced to 78 months in prison in connection with a telemarketing fraud scheme, and Hassan Nemazee, a major donor to Democratic political causes, who was sentenced to 12 years in a bank fraud case.

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Prosecution Team

Damian Williams

U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York

Mr. Williams joined the U.S. attorney’s office in 2012 and was named by President Biden to the top post in 2021. He leads an office of 220 assistant U.S. attorneys and executives. He has overseen the prosecutions of defendants like Sam Bankman-Fried, convicted of stealing billions of dollars from his FTX cryptocurrency exchange, and Juan Orlando Hernández, the ex-Honduran president convicted in a cocaine importation case.

Christina Clark

Trial Attorney, Justice Department

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She works in the department’s national security division. Ms. Clark helped to prosecute the former high-ranking F.B.I. official Charles McGonigal, who pleaded guilty in a money-laundering case in connection with his work for a Russian oligarch under sanctions.

Catherine Ghosh

Assistant U.S. Attorney, Southern District, Public Corruption Unit

She helped prosecute 70 current and former employees of the New York City Housing Authority in what the authorities called the “largest single-day bribery takedown in the history of the Justice Department.”

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Eli Mark

Assistant U.S. Attorney, Public Corruption Unit

He helped to prosecute defendants in an N.C.A.A. basketball recruiting scandal, as well as a former State Supreme Court justice in an obstruction case.

Paul Monteleoni

Assistant U.S. Attorney, Public Corruption Unit

He helped to prosecute a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney in a bribery case and Robert Hadden, a former Columbia gynecologist who lured patients to his office and abused them.

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Lara Pomerantz

Assistant U.S. Attorney, Public Corruption Unit

She helped to prosecute Ghislaine Maxwell, the former companion to Jeffrey Epstein, in a sex trafficking case and Norman Seabrook, the former longtime president of New York City’s correction officers’ union, in a bribery case.

Daniel Richenthal

Deputy Chief of the Southern District’s Criminal Division

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He helped to win the convictions of Sheldon Silver, the former Democratic speaker of the New York State Assembly, and Michael Avenatti, the once high-flying lawyer who tried to extort more than $20 million from the apparel giant Nike.

Defense Lawyers

Adam Fee

Lawyer for Robert Menendez

He previously spent five years as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District — the same office prosecuting Mr. Menendez. Based in California, Mr. Fee focuses on white-collar criminal defense work.

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Avi Weitzman

Lawyer for Mr. Menendez

He spent nearly seven years as a Southern District prosecutor and is now a New York City based partner at the same law firm as Mr. Fee, with an emphasis on complex civil and criminal cases.

Lawrence Lustberg

Lawyer for Wael Hana

A prominent New Jersey defense attorney, he was previously a federal public defender. He also represents Mr. Daibes in the pending bank fraud case in New Jersey.

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César de Castro

Lawyer for Fred Daibes

Previously a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, he now runs his own New York City-based law firm. Last year, he represented Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former top security official who, after a high-profile federal trial in Brooklyn, was convicted of taking millions of dollars from the Sinaloa drug cartel.

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Video: Judge Says Michael Cohen Must Stop Taunting Trump

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Video: Judge Says Michael Cohen Must Stop Taunting Trump

Ahead of what could be the most explosive testimony in Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial, the judge on Friday told prosecutors that he was personally asking that Michael D. Cohen stop taunting the former president. Jonah Bromwich, a criminal justice reporter at The New York Times, gives his takeaways.

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New York

Live Updates: Quiet End of Week for Trump Trial as Cohen Looms as Witness

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Prosecutors said they could rest their case as soon as Thursday, and the judge asked them to keep Michael D. Cohen, expected to take the stand on Monday, from attacking Donald J. Trump in the meantime. Five witnesses testified Friday in rapid succession.

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