Trump VP hopeful Elise Stefanik files ‘misconduct’ suit against judge overseeing hush money trial

New York Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik, one of several prominent GOP figures currently jostling to be Donald Trump’s running mate, has filed a misconduct complaint against Judge Juan Merchan, alleging that his appointment to Mr Trump’s ongoing Manhattan hush money trial was “not random at all”.

The House Republican Conference chairwoman wrote to Kay-Ann Porter Campbell, inspector-general of the New York State Unified Court System, calling for an investigation “to determine whether the required random selection process was in fact followed” when Judge Merchan was handed the case brought against Mr Trump by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg last spring.

Ms Stefanik posted the full text of her complaint on X/Twitter, introducing it by alleging that the justice is “a Biden donor whose daughter is fundraising millions off his unprecedented work”, an allusion to Loren Merchan’s work as a political consultant for a number of well-known Democratic politicians, a smear Mr Trump has also used to attempt to discredit the case against him.

In the complaint itself, the representative questions what she refers to as the “repeated assignment of Acting Justice Juan Merchan, a Democrat Party donor, to criminal cases related to President Donald J Trump and his allies”.

She notes that the judge has presided over a previous criminal trial involving the Trump Organization as well as the current hush money case, and will next hear a case against Mr Trump’s former White House strategist Steve Bannon.

On the appointment of justices by a process of random selection, Ms Stefanik writes: “If justices were indeed being randomly assigned in the Criminal Term, the probability of two specific criminal cases being assigned to the same