NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump’s hush money case is being overseen by a veteran Manhattan Supreme Court jurist who also heard the Trump Organization tax fraud trial that in January ended in a jail term for Trump confidant and aide Allen Weisselberg.
Justice Juan Merchan, a 60-year-old former prosecutor who was born in Colombia and raised in Queens, carries a reputation as a thorough and even-handed judge, and has spent more than a decade on the bench in New York.
He attended Baruch College and Hofstra University School of Law and worked as an assistant attorney in the Manhattan district attorney’s office in the 1990s. From 2006 to 2009, he worked as a family court judge. He has served as an acting justice of the state Supreme Court since 2009.
