April 4, 2024 - Epoch Times
11:19
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| Over the past week, there have been quite a few developments in the ongoing legal battle facing President Trump right here in New York City, the so-called Stormy Daniels hush money case. | |
| To start with, just a few days ago, President Trump's legal team began to push to have the judge overseeing this case recuse himself because of the allegedly glaring conflicts of interest present within his own family. | |
| Specifically, according to a report that was published within the pages of the New York Post, quote, attorneys for Donald Trump are considering again seeking the recusal of the judge overseeing his hush money case. | |
| The judge's daughter and her political consulting firm have profited off his legal woes. | |
| Two major Democratic clients of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchant's daughter, Lauren Merchant, have raised at least $93 million in campaign donations using Mr. Trump's case in their solicitation emails. | |
| And so obviously this is a lot to unpack. | |
| To begin with, the judge overseeing the whole New York case is this man right here, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchant, originally from Colombia. | |
| And according to publicly available records from the Federal Elections Commission, during the 2020 election cycle, Judge Merchant donated at least three times to Act Blue, the Democrat Political Action Committee. | |
| It doesn't look like he donated much in terms of sheer dollar amount, but it does go to show his political leanings. | |
| Furthermore, his daughter, Ms. | |
| Lauren Merchant, she was once employed by the Kamala Harris for President campaign as the Director of Digital Persuasion. | |
| However, when that whole campaign fell apart, Ms. | |
| Lauren Merchant moved on and she joined a company called Authentic Campaigns. | |
| Now, at first, when she first joined, she was the director of digital advertising. | |
| Before long, she became the vice president, and then later, she became the president of Authentic Campaigns, a position that she continues to hold on to this day. | |
| And according to their website, that you can see up on your screen, Authentic Campaign is a quote, full-service digital marketing agency for nonprofits and campaigns that unleashes the power of the internet to create lasting and inclusive change. | |
| Meaning, in plain English, that they are a marketing agency that's utilized by political campaigns in order to solicit donations, among other things. | |
| And this firm claims that their success is driven by their use of data to craft specific, tailored messages which ultimately get results. | |
| Quote, our staff will partner with you to implement thoughtful, data-driven strategies to advance your goals. | |
| Our mission is to create content that is tailored to their specific needs and goals. | |
| And their client list is a who's who of the Democratic Party, including the campaigns of Kamala Harris, Ilhan Omar, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Cory Booker, and so on. | |
| Currently, it appears that their top clients include the Adam Schiff campaign for Senate, as well as the Senate Majority PAC, both of which have been using the Manhattan case against President Trump in their email sales pitches. | |
| For example, Up on your screen is an email that was sent from the Adam Schiff Senate campaign, which used the Manhattan DA's indictment of President Trump in order to solicit donations. | |
| And solicit money they did. | |
| According to a review of the data from the Federal Elections Commission, the New York Post found that, quote, Schiff's campaign for U.S. | |
| Senate scored an eye-popping $20 million in aid since he began soliciting donations off the presumptive GOP presidential frontrunners' unprecedented 34-count indictment last April, according to Federal Election Commission records. | |
| The Senate Majority PAC, which supports Democratic Senate campaigns, pocketed $73.6 million since it also began firing off fundraising emails following the ex-president's indictment. | |
| Now, you probably can't attribute 100% of those donations exclusively to the Manhattan indictment, but it's pretty obvious that Ms. | |
| Lauren Merchant's clients used the Manhattan indictment against President Trump to their advantage. | |
| And you could also easily imagine a situation where, if the court ultimately finds Trump guilty in this case, her clients would use that piece of breaking news to solicit even more donations. | |
| However, on the flip side, if the court finds Trump not guilty, then the donations won't come. | |
| Meaning that, at the very least, there is a potential for conflict of interest. | |
| Having Trump be guilty could mean millions of dollars in sales to the judge's daughter. | |
| Now, this is where things get interesting. | |
| Because President Trump has been taking to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to rail against this whole situation. | |
| Here are some recent excerpts of him talking about the situation. | |
| Quote, Maybe the judge is such a hater because his daughter makes money by working to get Trump. | |
| And as a result of President Trump's statements, just two days ago, Judge Merchant extended the gag order against him to include his family members. | |
| Because, you see, Judge Merchant had already slapped President Trump with a gag order in this particular case, not allowing him to speak publicly about witnesses, staff members of the court, potential jurors, and so on. | |
| However, just two days ago, that same judge, he extended the gag order to include his family members. | |
| In explaining exactly why he did this, Judge Merchant wrote in his five-page order that, quote, This pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose. | |
| It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings that not only they, but their family members as well, are fair game for defendants vitriol. | |
| And then, going further, in addressing how this will limit President Trump's freedom of speech, Judge Merchant justified his actions as follows, quote, These circumstances of the instant matter, however, are different. | |
| The conventional David versus Goliath rules are no longer in play, as demonstrated by the singular power that defendants' words have on countless others. | |
| And as such, President Trump himself is no longer allowed to publicly speak about the potential conflicts of interest that this whole situation presents. | |
| But that wasn't the end of the story. | |
| Because shortly after this gag order was extended, online sleuths discovered that the judge's wife, Ms. | |
| Lara Merchant, she spent three years working as a special assistant to Ms. | |
| Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, who campaigned on a platform of getting Trump. | |
| Quote, Lara Merchant, the wife of the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump's hush money case in Manhattan, once worked for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the massive $350 million civil fraud case against the former president with the revelation reviving claims of bias and calls for the judge's recusal. | |
| Records reviewed by the Epoch Times show that Ms. | |
| Merchant worked for 21 years as a special assistant to the Attorney General in New York, including three years under Ms. | |
| James. | |
| She changed jobs over two years ago. | |
| Now, it is worth mentioning that even though the job title of Special Assistant seems very special, it's actually a pretty common title in the Attorney General's office. | |
| There are several hundred people in that office who are Special Assistants, and given the fact that the judge's wife worked at that office for 21 years during the tenures of many different Attorney Generals, it frankly does not seem to be that big of a deal in terms of presenting a conflict of interest that she had one time worked under Letitia James. | |
| Which is something that the Trump team appears to acknowledge, because shortly after the gag order was extended against President Trump, his legal team filed a pre-motion letter with the court in order to recuse the judge. | |
| You can see the letter up on your screen, and if you read it, it makes no mention of the judge's wife. | |
| And instead, it details how the position of the judge's daughter, and her fundraising efforts that used the Trump case to solicit donations, presents what they call a clear conflict of interest. | |
| Under these circumstances, Your Honor has an interest in this case that warrants recusal. | |
| There is an unacceptable risk that the Court's family relationships will influence judicial conduct and the Court's impartiality might reasonably be questioned. | |
| Therefore, President Trump respectfully requests permission to file a motion in support of these arguments that includes briefing and evidence on Wednesday, April 3, 2024. | |
| All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment. | |
| Listen, we currently are entering uncharted waters. | |
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| And as such, the case takes a new twist. | |
| Even though this trial is supposed to start on April 15th, which is just two weeks from now, if this motion goes through, the start date will have to be put on hold and we might have another situation like what we had over in Georgia, where instead of the actual trial itself, a conflict of interest hearing will be held for the entire country to see. | |
| However, there is something odd, and you probably already noticed it here. | |
| It's the fact that the judge himself gets to decide whether this motion can go through, which on the face of it is kind of odd, that the judge who is being accused of having a conflict of interest gets to decide whether or not he has a conflict of interest. | |
| Now, there are times when judges do step down, with the thinking being that they have an interest in upholding the appearance of neutrality for the whole justice system. | |
| But it's fully within the discretion of the judge to step down or not. | |
| I mean, there is an appeals process that Trump's legal team could go through if the judge refuses to do so, but whether or not the appeals court will take it up is also out of their control. | |
| Regardless, that is the basic situation here. | |
| We'll just have to wait and see how this whole thing will actually play itself out. | |
| But in the meantime, you won't be hearing too much from President Trump, because the same judge that is accused of having a conflict of interest, and that gets to decide whether he has a conflict of interest or not, filed a gag order against President Trump, meaning that he will not be able to talk about it. | |
| Until a decision is made one way or the other, if you'd like to go deeper into this case, I'll throw my research notes. | |
| You can find them down in the description box below this video if you're the type of person that likes to dig into the weeds. | |
| And all I ask in return is that as you're making your way down there to the description box, take a super short detour to smash those like and subscribe buttons so that the YouTube algorithm will be quite literally forced to share this video out to ever more people. | |
| And then lastly, if you enjoyed today's episode and you're just thinking to yourself, man, I love this content, I just wish Roman would publish more episodes every single week. | |
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| And then until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times. | |
| Stay informed. |
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