Donald Trump blasted Judge Juan Merchan Saturday, saying the Manhattan jurist should be disbarred after finding that the president-elect's conviction for the crime of falsifying business records should not be thrown out.
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: "I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge by a corrupt judge who is just doing the work of the Biden/Harris Injustice Department, an attack on their political opponent, ME!
"He created a case where there was none. Keeps a 'gag order' on me so that I can't talk about how crooked he is. The Fake News knows all about it, but they refuse to talk. He may be the most conflicted judge in New York State history.
"The accountant testified, with total corroboration, that the records were perfect & totally above board. A legal expense was called, on the books, a legal expense. There was nothing else it could have been called. This was the so-called falsifying of records," he wrote.
"I was hiding nothing, everything was out in the open for all to see. Every legal scholar of note said there IS NO CASE AGAINST ME. The judge should be disbarred! This is why people, and companies, are FLEEING New York - A corrupt court system.
"In another crooked New York case, another corrupt Judge (overturned 5 times on my case alone, & the most overturned judge in New York!) valued Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, at $18,000,000, when it is worth 50 to 100 times that amount….And then we have, also in New York, the woman I never met (celebrity photo lines from 30 years ago don't count!), who was awarded almost $100,000,000," Trump wrote.
"A totally out of control, Trump hating judge, presided. The Biden/Harris DOJ [Department of Justice] was involved, directly or indirectly, in each of these cases. I won against Deranged Jack Smith!"
On Friday, Merchan set Trump's sentencing for Jan. 10, just over a week before he is set to return to the White House, and indicated he would not impose jail time. In December, Merchan refused to throw out Trump's business records conviction because of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential immunity.
A jury convicted Trump in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump denies wrongdoing.
A month after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents can't be prosecuted for official acts — things they did in the course of running the country — and that prosecutors can't cite those actions to bolster a case centered on purely personal, unofficial conduct.
Trump's lawyers then cited the Supreme Court opinion to argue that the jury got some improper evidence, such as Trump's presidential financial disclosure form, testimony from some White House aides, and social media posts made while he was in office.
Merchan denied the bulk of Trump's claims that some of prosecutors' evidence related to official acts and implicated immunity protections.
The judge said that even if he found that some evidence related to official conduct, he'd still conclude that prosecutors' decision to use "these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch."
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Trump would need to show remorse if he wanted to receive a pardon.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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