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.
Brendan Tracy, a criminal defense lawyer who has appeared before Merchan as a prosecutor, said the judge is well-suited for a high-wattage case like the one against Trump.
“He truly strikes me as probably one of the smartest and one of the fairest judges in that courthouse,” Tracy said 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 defense attorney who has litigated before Merchan several times, described him as a “very serious judge” who “runs a tight room.”
And Nicholas Gravante, a lawyer who represented Weisselberg, said in an email that he found 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 against Merchan, has focused on Weisselberg’s case in harangues of the judge. Merchan sentenced Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, to five months in jail after Weisselberg pleaded guilty to tax fraud.
In a post on his Truth Social platform Friday, Trump said without evidence that Merchan was “hand picked” by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to preside over his hush money case, and claimed the judge “railroaded” Weisselberg.
In fact, Merchan was randomly assigned to the investigative grand jury that indicted Trump and thus to his court case.
Trump also wrote that the judge had treated his company “viciously” in the tax fraud case that resulted in the conviction last year of the Trump Organization, the former president’s family real estate business.
Trump has saved some his sharpest barbs for Bragg in recent days, but also continued to lash out against the judge Tuesday ahead of his arraignment, writing on social media that Merchan is “highly partisan” and an “unfair disaster.”
Trump has a long history of targeting the legitimacy of judges hearing cases linked to him. His lawyers in the historic case — Trump is the first former American president to be indicted — have taken a different tone on Merchan.
“I have no issue with this judge whatsoever,” Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, told CNN on Sunday. “He has a very good reputation.”
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