Donald Trump's hush money trial wrapped up for the week on Tuesday, capped off with an appearance by the former president outside the courtroom in which he insinuated that Judge Juan Merchan "hates" him because he immigrated to the U.S. from Colombia.
As part of what has become an end-of-day ritual, Trump, addressing reporters outside the Manhattan court, read aloud analyses from sympathetic pundits such as Fox News' Gregg Jarrett, who has made a habit of inventing legal doctrine to justify Trump's alleged criminal actions. This time, Trump echoed Jarrett's line that Merchan and prosecuting attorney Alvin Bragg "loathed" him, before proposing his own theory.
"The judge hates Donald Trump, just take a look," he concluded to the assembled reporters. "Take a look at him. Take a look at where he comes from. He can't stand Donald Trump. He's doing everything in his power."
Merchan was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and moved to Queens, New York at the age of six. After attending Baruch College, he received a J.D. from Hofstra University School of Law.
In Trump's telling, judges with Mexican ancestry also hold a grudge against him. During a civil fraud case against Trump University in 2016, then-candidate Trump called Judge Gonzalo Curiel a "hater" because he was "Hispanic" and "Mexican"; because of his ancestry, Trump maintained, Curiel was biased against him for wanting to build a border wall. Curiel was born in Indiana, went to law school at Indiana University, and, like Merchan, is an American citizen.
But Trump has been unstinting in his praise for another judge born in Colombia. That judge, Trump appointee Aileen Cannon, is presiding over his classified documents case, and has been widely criticized for breaking legal norms in favor of the former president.
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