Ex-prosecutor slams Trump's 'weak sauce' argument for hush money judge's recusal

Donald Trump's bid to remove the judge from his criminal hush money case isn't going to go over well, a legal expert said on Wednesday.

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance weighed in on what she said is Trump's "second attempt at a motion to recuse the Judge... for essentially the same reasons as the first one."

"It’s in the form of a letter because the Judge now requires both parties to file a request for permission to file a motion before they actually file one due to Trump’s early disregard for deadlines. The practice is to send the letter and ask the court to adopt it as the motion if the Judge is going to grant permission. The Judge denied the first motion, and this one should meet a similar fate," she said. "The Judge’s daughter has a job. In that job, she works on behalf of Democratic campaigns. She has done work for notable Democrats, including Kamala Harris. To Trump supporters, including his lawyers, this translates as some variant of: the Judge’s daughter makes money because he’s keeping the case alive."

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Vance continues:

"Of course, Judge Merchan did what good judges do when a motion alleging they have a conflict is filed. When the first motion was filed, he sought an ethics opinion on whether he had a conflict of interest that required him to step aside. The ethics panel concluded he did not because the outcome of the case wouldn’t impact his daughter’s business."

The "best" Trump’s lawyers can argue, according to the Substack article, "is that the Judge’s daughter does business with some of his opponents."

"It’s pretty weak sauce, akin to arguing that if a judge’s kid does business with Airbus, the judge can’t sit on a case involving Boeing. That’s not the standard being used here—it’s whether decisions the Judge makes will impact his daughter’s financial prospects. Here, whether Trump wins or loses, the daughter continues to do her work on behalf of her Democratic clients. The fact that she’s in politics, so to speak, isn’t the defining standard."