House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is requesting an investigation into the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in New York, pointing to his role in at least two other trials related to the former president in possible violation of state laws that dictate judges must be randomly assigned to cases.
In a letter sent to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct on Tuesday, Stefanik requested the panel determine whether the appointment of Judge Juan Merchan to Trump’s hush money trial violates the Uniform Rules for New York State Trial Courts. Those rules dictate that judges must be assigned “pursuant to a method of random selection authorized by the Chief Administrator,” something Stefanik suggests is being ignored in order to convict Trump.
“One cannot help but suspect that the ‘random selection’ at work in the assignment of Acting Justice Merchan, a Democrat Party donor, to these cases involving prominent Republicans, is in fact not random at all,” Stefanik wrote in the letter, which was also sent to Kay-Ann Porter Campbell, the inspector general of the New York State Unified Court System. “If Acting Justice Merchan or any other Justices of the Court are found to have violated these rules,