Donald Trump has launched his second attempt to oust the judge in his Manhattan hush-money case, only hours after he squashed the former president’s bid to subpoena NBCUniversal over a Stormy Daniels documentary.
On Friday, Trump’s legal team filed a motion arguing that Judge Juan Merchan should recuse himself over a supposed conflict of interest in the case. They argued that his daughter Loren, who works for a political consulting firm, has an alleged “direct financial interest” to seeing Trump put away for his crimes.
Earlier this week, Judge Merchan expanded a gag order against the former president, who has relentlessly attacked his daughter in social media posts, only for Trump to go right back to posting about her hours later. Trump’s team has sought to make her the focal point in their endless crusade to get Merchan removed, and the trial delayed.
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Earlier on Friday, Judge Merchan thwarted another of Trump’s attempts to disrupt his hush money trial. In late March, Trump subpoenaed NBCUniversal for information on a documentary about one of the trial’s key witnesses, adult film star Stormy Daniels, who Trump is accused of having paid-off through his former attorney Michael Cohen.
Trump’s team had hoped to demonstrate collusion between Daniels and the media company about the Stormy documentary release date, which they contended was purposefully slotted in proximity to the trial’s start date.
NBCUniversal filed a motion to nix the subpoena, which was granted by Judge Juan Merchan on Friday.
Judge Merchan said the subpoena was “too broad,” and needed to seek specific statements, as opposed to requesting all documents related to the project. Even if the Trump team’s subpoena had been more specific, Merchan wrote, granting unfettered access to materials owned by a media company would still violate civil rights law.
“Because Defendant’s claims are purely speculative and unsupported, his subpoena and the demands therein are the very definition of a fishing expedition,” the judge wrote.
Judge Merchan also cited a vice president at NBCUniversal, Erica Forsadt, who said that Daniels was not provided the “right to approve the content of the Documentary or the timing of its release.”
On Wednesday, Judge Merchan denied Donald Trump’s last-minute effort to delay his hush-money trial until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on his presidential immunity claim in a separate case.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records. His trial is set to start April 15.
