He judge Juan Merchán, assigned to the case against the former president Donald Trump ((2017-2021) in New York for falsifying commercial documents, as well as his family have received more than a dozen threats through calls and emails, local media point out.
Most of the threats and defamatory calls, which apparently came from out of state and are being investigated, occurred within 24 hours of Merchán reading the 34 charges filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office against Trump last Tuesday, from which the former president pleaded not guilty.
After finding out that Merchán would be the judge that he would read the charges of the Prosecutor’s Office, Trump wrote on his Truth social network that the magistrate hated him.
Merchán, who emigrated from Colombia to New York when he was six years old, previously presided over the tax fraud trial of the Trump Organization, owned by the former president; he oversaw a case against his former adviser Steve Bannon and sentenced Allen Weisselberg, one of the businessman’s most loyal squires, to prison.
Prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who has led the investigation against the former Republican president, and other staff in his office have continued to receive threats, for which reason the police have increased security for them, the media also reported.
According to the indictment, the former president orchestrated a scheme to pay the silence of three people who could harm his campaign for the Presidency in 2016, including the porn actress Stormy Daniels.
At a press conference in Miami, after hearing the charges against him, Trump claimed that “the lunatics, maniacs and perverts of the radical left” accused and arrested him for no reason.”
