JD Vance is fed up after the Donald Trump trial jury found the former president guilty. JD Vance wants Judge Merchan and the liberal daughter subpoenaed. Vance also penned a letter stating the following:
Merchan has imposed a prior restraint on the protected speech of a former president who is now leading presidential polling of the next election. On Merchan’s orders, a Republican presidential candidate has been made powerless to question the credibility of the witnesses testifying against him, the motivations of the prosecutors pursuing him, or the impartiality of the apparently conflicted judge fining him …
Merchan has not been content to deprive President Trump of only his First Amendment rights, either. As a criminal defendant, President Trump is entitled to a fair trial by an impartial jury. Merchan has done his best to deprive Trump of both …
When it comes to the admission and exclusion of evidence, Merchan has been just as shameless. He has bent over backwards to allow the prosecution to introduce whatever evidence it wants, e.g., by allowing a prosecution witness to testify at length about the alleged details of an unproven sexual episode with no relevance to the underlying charges. But he has taken a strong hand against defense evidence at every opportunity …
As for a possible conspiracy under Section 241, there are many likely coconspirators to consider. For one, Merchan’s daughter Loren seems to be an obvious beneficiary of Merchan’s biased rulings. She works as a fundraiser for Democratic officials and organizations, and she helped her clients raise $93 million from donors during Trump’s trial in New York, partly by invoking the case and smearing the defendant in solicitation emails.
Prosecutors in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg—from Christopher Conroy to Matthew Colangelo to Bragg himself—have also shown themselves to be plausible coconspirators. After all, they have repeatedly urged Merchan to deprive President Trump of his First Amendment rights in court filings and oral advocacy. One can only wonder what sort of ex parte communications might have led Merchan to so enthusiastically embrace a prior restraint on speech that he would have known to be repugnant to the Constitution.
