This Tuesday, former President Donald Trump will see the face of Judge Juan Manuel Merchán when he appears at the hearing for the imposition of charges in the case of the alleged payments to the exactriz porno Stormy Daniels. The maganate considers him an old adversary. “He hates me,” Trump commented when he learned that he was called to try the case.
Merchán was the New York district judge who intervened in the process against the Trump Organization last year for tax fraud, from which Allen Weisselberg, long-time director of finance for the company, came out. Trump also believes that prosecutor Alvin Bragg selected Merchán after he managed to “manipulate” Weisselberg into pleading guilty.
Merchán is of Colombian origin. He was born in Bogotá 60 years ago and immigrated to the United States at the age of 6. according to the newspaper The New York Times, grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. He worked as a dishwasher and was the first in his family to go to college. He graduated from Hofstra Law School in 1994.
He also worked as an auditor in a small real estate developer. After graduating in the 1990s, he began his legal career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.
In 1999 he went to work at the New York State Attorney General’s Office, where he made a career until in 2006 he was appointed family court judge in the district of the Bronx.
In 2009 he was appointed to his current position as interim judge in the trial court, which in New York is known as the “Supreme Court,” the newspaper said.
Former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon is on Merchan’s file. Accused of misleading donors who gave money to build a wall on the southern US border, Bannon won a presidential pardon from Trump that frustrated his court process.
The judge was in charge of the negotiations that led to Weisselberg agreeing to plead guilty to tax fraud. He agreed to testify against Trump’s company in exchange for a five-month jail sentence.
The Trump Organization was ordered to pay a $1.6 million fine, the highest amount applicable in this case, for the 17 counts of tax fraud in the indictment.
According to him TimesMerchán is particularly prepared for the countless spreadsheets and tax return documents that had to be reviewed in Trump’s case because of his record as an auditor before graduating from law.
“It’s someone who reads every word on every page, every document, including the footnotes, and then the cases that [los abogados] they summon him,” José A. Fanjul, a former assistant district attorney for Manhattan, told the New York newspaper.
In addition, “he is a serious, intelligent and calm-tempered lawyer,” Ron Kuby, a veteran lawyer in Manhattan, added to NBC. “He is not one of those judges who yell at the lawyers. He is always in control of the room,” he added.
