Bragg trashes Trump's hush money recusal motion for 'vanishingly small number of facts'

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg submitted his response to Donald Trump's demand that the judge in the upcoming hush money case be recused because of who his daughter works for.

The case accuses Trump of 2016 election interference by allegedly having his lawyer Michael Cohen pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels to hide from voters an affair the pair were accused of having.

In the filing, Bragg said that this is the second time Trump has made a demand for recusal based on the actions of the family member of the judge. Trump has made a blitz of motions legal analysts have called a move out of "desperation."

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"This Court should construe the motion as a request for leave to reargue or renew the Court's August 11, 2023 Order rejecting defendant's earlier, identical recusal arguments and deny the motion on procedural grounds alone," Bragg begins.

"The motion also fails on the merits," he continued. "Defendant's rewarmed arguments identify no new law or fact that calls into question this Court's prior conclusion that '[d]efendant has failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic reason for recusal to be appropriate, much less required.' ... Instead, defendant's motion is nothing more than his latest effort to delay the forthcoming trial; and — in both timing and substance — appears transparently reverse-engineered to provide an ex post justification for defendant's attacks on the Court and the Court's family. This Court should reject defendant's dilatory tactic and deny the motion."

Last year, Judge Juan Merchan was cleared by a judicial ethics panel in New York which looked into if his connection with his daughter, who is president of a political consultancy firm which has Democratic Party clients, would affect his ability to oversee the trial.

Bragg went on to school the Trump lawyers, attacking them for presenting a "vanishingly small number of facts" after the previous motion.

Read the full filing here.