Over the past year, I have investigated all of the six major cases against Donald Trump that played out simultaneously between his two administrations for my book Breaking the Law. Each one of them involves obvious improprieties that necessitate investigations. In many instances, I believe investigators will find criminal activity, which ought to be prosecuted.
It is encouraging and heartening to see that the Department of Justice has taken up a criminal investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James and that the Office of the Special Counsel is investigating Special Counsel Jack Smith. This could mark a new era of accountability in this country and a return to law and order.
Last week, I offered a list of people who ought to get investigated by the DOJ. After reflecting on the list for a few days, I have concluded that the next person who ought to face deep scrutiny is Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the Stormy Daniels (not-)”hush money” case. (Hush money is not illegal; it was a case about falsifying business records.)
Merchan, a partisan Democrat from a deeply partisan family, presided over the most partisan political persecution of any I documented in the book. He relied on unprecedented absurdities to get Trump branded as a “convicted felon” just ahead of the election. This was a grave miscarriage of justice.
The improprieties in the case are too numerous to ignore. Here are some of them:
He’s a Joe Biden Donor
This is grounds for an ethics investigation already. Under Section 100.5 of the New York Code of Judicial Conduct, sitting judges cannot “directly or indirectly engage in any political activity.” Prohibited political activity includes “soliciting funds for, paying an assessment to, or making a contribution to a political organization or candidate.” The New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics is unequivocal: “A sitting judge may not make political contributions at any time, even to a U.S. presidential candidate.”
He literally gave to a group called “Stop Republicans.” It wasn’t much money: ten dollars. But that’s ten too much according to the law.
His Daughter Is a Democrat MEGA-Fundraiser
Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, is an activist Democrat with ties to the prosecution. She is president of a Chicago-based leftist consulting firm, Authentic Campaigns, which counts the Senate Majority PAC, a major fundraiser for Democrats, and then-Congressman Adam Schiff as clients. Schiff was the lead manager prosecuting Trump in his first impeachment trial and would go on to become a senator from California.
The New York Post reported in March 2024 that Loren Merchan’s consultancy had raised at least $93 million in campaign donations for the election cycle. That number no doubt ballooned from there.
Authentic Campaigns bagged a staggering $36,414,889 during the 2024 election cycle, according to Open Secrets. This would make Loren Merchan one of the Democrats’ biggest fundraisers.
She was also tied to Dan Goldman, another impeachment attorney, and worked for “Kamala Harris for the People.”
For Loren Merchan’s father to preside over a trial where Trump is the defendant in an election is, as Trump put it to me, “the greatest conflict of interest of all time.”
Inappropriate Use of Gag Orders – Which Remains in Place
Merchan gagged Trump, ordering him to not make public comments about witnesses, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, connected family members (did he have his Democrat consultant daughter in mind?), and others. He threatened Trump with fines or up to thirty days in jail.
I asked President Trump in March 2025 if the gag order remained in place. “Nobody knows,” he said. “The case is over and nobody knows if it still applies. He never took it off. You know why? Because he knows how crooked it was.”
Allowing the Court to Degenerate into Debauchery
Merchan allowed the porn star and professional provocateur Stormy Daniels to take the stand, and her testimony was exactly what you would have expected. She shared graphic details of the alleged encounters that left jurors cringing. She reportedly made jokes that fell flat.
Violation of the Fifth and Sixth Amendment Rights
The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution demands that a defendant “be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.”
As I explain in Breaking the Law, D.A. Alvin Bragg had to piggyback Trump’s supposed falsifying business records crime to a secondary crime in order to get it classified as a felony from a misdemeanor. If he failed to do so, the statute of limitations would have run out. (That this was attempted is obvious evidence that this was a targeted political prosecution.)
The second crime finally came to light during the jury instructions.
According to the court, Donald Trump attempted to influence an election by “unlawful means.” What were the unlawful means? Well, nobody ever specified. Instead of solving the unnamed crime issue, this only made it worse. The charge introduced a third (!) mystery crime piggybacking off the second one.
If this is sounding ridiculous, just wait until you hear that the third crime was not specified, ever!
Merchan told the jury that the third crime could be multiple choice. It was a choose-your-own-adventure trial. He informed the jury that if they agreed that Trump falsified business records to influence an election, they no longer had to agree unanimously.
At a constitutional level, the jury verdict needed to be unanimous. But in Merchan’s courtroom, it did not need to be unanimous on the third crime. The jury merely needed to agree that there was a third crime, any crime.
In addition to Trump’s being denied his Sixth Amendment rights to being informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, Merchan was now denying Trump due process rights afforded to him by the Fifth Amendment.
It was absolute lunacy that this was allowed to go on.
Blocking a Key Trump Witness
On the menu for the third crime was a Federal Election Commission Act (FECA) violation. While the porn star Daniels was allowed to take the stand and contradict herself, Mechan blocked the Trump team’s effort to bring in former member of the Federal Election Commission Bradley A. Smith to explain this area of the law to the jury. I see no other explanation for this other than it may have ruined Bragg’s case.
Convicted Felon Trickery
Merchan allowed for a dirty trick to allow for the “convicted felon” branding to stick to Trump into his second presidency.
After Trump was convicted, and subsequently won the election anyway, Judge Merchan set sentencing for President Trump during the transition of power from Biden to Trump, on January 10, 2025. Merchan wanted to make sure he could brand Trump with the “convicted felon” tag before he became president, when it would be impossible (or at least overly complicated) to take the case any further.
Now, if Trump wants to clear his name—and he certainly does—it will take years of effort.
All of this is designed to distract him during his presidency.
Perhaps all of this is legal, but it is nonetheless outrageous and deeply anti-democratic to try to sabotage a president in this way.
Other Improprieties
There were a series of other peculiarities and outrages in the case that are documented in Breaking the Law, such as the presence of Matthew Colangelo, the wringer brought in from the very top of Biden’s DOJ to Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan D.A. office in order to try win the case against Trump. And consider that the case would likely never have happened if the government did not have access to former-Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s gmail account as part of the investigations into the Russia collusion hoax. (Throw all the felony convictions out based on that alone!)
Readers will have to read the book to see the full accounting of them all.
Still, there is one more reason to investigate Juan Merchan:
Election Interference
The Stormy Daniels case, like all six of the major cases against Trump, amounted to election interference. They were trying to jail him or at least monopolize his time to hamper his ability to campaign. “I should be out campaigning now instead of sitting in a very cold courthouse all day long,” Trump told reporters outside the courtroom. “This is a Biden prosecution. It’s election interference at a level that nobody in this country has ever seen before.”
“This all comes from in the White House,” he said.
He was 100 percent correct. If Joe Biden had suggested this was an unfair targeted prosecution at any point, the charges certainly would have been dropped, and America could have resumed our tradition of free and fair elections.
Not in Juan Merchan’s courtroom. He and Biden were going to see this through to the bitter end, which they no doubt believed saw Trump in an orange jumpsuit.
This article was adapted from portions of Breaking the Law.
Breaking the Law: Exposing the Weaponization of America’s Legal System Against Donald Trump, which has been hailed by President Trump as a “must read” book, is available in hardcover, eReader format, and as an audiobook read by the author himself.
Alex Marlow is the editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, a two-time New York Times bestselling author, and the host of “The Alex Marlow Show” podcast produced weekdays by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. You can follow Alex on Facebook, Instagram, and X at @AlexMarlow.
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