NEW YORK: Donald Trump has lost his latest bid for a new judge in his New York hush money criminal case as it heads toward a key ruling and potential sentencing next month.
In a decision posted Wednesday, Judge Juan M. Merchan declined to step aside and said Trump’s demand was a rehash “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims” about the political ties of Mercan’s daughter and his ability to judge the historic case fairly and impartially.
It is the third that the judge has rejected such a request from lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee.
All three times, they argued that Merchan, a state court judge in Manhattan, has a conflict of interest because of his daughter’s work as a political consultant for prominent Democrats and campaigns. Among them was Vice President Kamala Harris when she ran for president in 2020. She is now her party’s 2024 White House nominee.
A state court ethics panel said last year that Merchan could continue on the case, writing that a relative’s independent political activities are not “a reasonable basis to question the judge’s impartiality.”
Merchan has repeatedly said he is certain he will continue to base his rulings “on the evidence and the law, without fear or favor, casting aside undue influence.”
“With these fundamental principles in mind, this Court now reiterates for the third time, that which should already be clear — innuendo and mischaracterizations do not a conflict create,” Merchan wrote in his three-page ruling. “Recusal is therefore not necessary, much less required.”
But with Harris now Trump’s Democratic opponent in this year’s White House election, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche wrote in a letter to the judge last month that the defense’s concerns have become “even more concrete.”
Prosecutors called the claims “a vexatious and frivolous attempt to relitigate” the issue.
Messages seeking comment on the ruling were left with Blanche. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.
Trump was convicted in May of falsifying his business’ records to conceal a 2016 deal to pay off porn actor Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with him. Prosecutors cast the payout as part of a Trump-driven effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first campaign.
Trump says all the stories were false, the business records were not and the case was a political maneuver meant to damage his current campaign. The prosecutor who brought the charges, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, is a Democrat.
Trump has pledged to appeal. Legally, that cannot happen before a defendant is sentenced.
In the meantime, his lawyers took other steps to try to derail the case. Besides the recusal request, they have asked Merchan to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case altogether because of the US Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity.
That decision reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal. Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the Daniels deal.
Earlier this month, Merchan set a Sept. 16 date to rule on the immunity claim, and Sept. 18 for “the imposition of sentence or other proceedings as appropriate.”
The hush money case is one of four criminal prosecutions brought against Trump last year.
One federal case, accusing Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, was dismissed last month. The Justice Department is appealing.
The others — federal and Georgia state cases concerning Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss — are not positioned to go to trial before the November election.
Judge rejects Donald Trump’s latest demand to step aside from hush money criminal case
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Judge rejects Donald Trump’s latest demand to step aside from hush money criminal case
- Judge Juan M. Merchan declined to step aside and said Trump’s demand was a rehash “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims”
- It is the third that the judge has rejected such a request from lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee
Pro-Palestinian protesters take Israel sculptures from UK university
LONDON: A pro-Palestinian group took two sculptures of Israel’s first president from a UK university in a protest marking the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, with police on Sunday confirming they were investigating reports of a burglary.
“Today, Palestine Action have marked 107 years since the Balfour Declaration, by taking two sculptures of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, from its display case at University of Manchester,” the protest group said in a press release.
Greater Manchester Police told AFP in a statement that it had received a report of a burglary at the north west England university at around 11.55pm (2355 GMT) on Friday.
The local Jewish Representative Council of GM & Region community group wrote on X that “overnight, criminals from Palestine Action broke into the University, smashed the case and stole the statue of Weizmann.
“We urge the authorities and Home Secretary to fully proscribe Palestine Action as it is essential they face the full force of the law,” it added.
In the Balfour Declaration, UK foreign minister Arthur Balfour spelled out plans to form “a national home for the Jewish people” in a 1917 letter to Walter Rothschild, a British politician and supporter of the idea of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
The letter was endorsed and published by the government on Nov 2, 1917.
Palestine Action also sprayed the London office of charity Jewish National Fund (JNF) with red paint, and carried out a similar protest at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Center (BICOM) lobby group HQ in London.
It also collaborated with students from the University of Cambridge, where Balfour was educated, to spray the university’s Institute of Manufacturing and Senate House.
Grenade attack wounds several in Indian-administered Kashmir — police
- Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947
- The region is home to a long-running insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and militants since 1989
SRINAGAR: Indian-administered Kashmir’s chief minister on Sunday condemned a “deeply disturbing” grenade attack on a busy market in the main city of Srinagar, which police and media reported left several wounded.
“A grenade attack on innocent shoppers at the ‘Sunday market’ in Srinagar is deeply disturbing,” Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said in a statement.
“There can be no justification for targeting innocent civilians.”
Abdullah did not say how many were wounded, but a senior police officer, who was not authorized to speak to journalists, said nine people were wounded, all civilians.
The Press Trust of India (PTI) showed dozens of armed police and soldiers cordoning off the area in the Himalayan city.
The Hindustan Times quoted Tasneem Showkat, a doctor at Srinagar’s SMHS Hospital, as saying at least eight injured had been taken for treatment.
“The injured include eight men and one woman,” Showkat said, the newspaper reported. “All are so far stable.”
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947 and is home to a long-running insurgency.
At least 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in the territory, battling an insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and separatist militants since 1989.
The grenade attack comes a day after Indian troops killed three suspected militants in two separate firefights.
In October, gunmen ambushed an army vehicle and killed five people, including three soldiers.
That came a week after seven people were shot dead near a construction site for a strategic road tunnel to Ladakh, a high-altitude Himalayan region bordering China.
New Delhi regularly blames Pakistan for arming militants and helping them launch attacks, an allegation Islamabad denies.
“The security apparatus must do everything possible to end this spurt of attacks at the earliest so that people can go about their lives without any fear,” Abdullah added.
Lahore primary schools shut over record pollution: Pakistan officials
LAHORE: Pakistan’s second city of Lahore will close primary schools for a week over record pollution, government authorities said Sunday, to avoid exposing millions of children to smog several times above levels deemed dangerous.
For days, the city of 14 million people has been enveloped by smog, a mix of fog and pollutants caused by low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal agricultural burning and winter cooling.
The air quality index, which measures a range of pollutants, exceeded 1,000 on Saturday — well above the level of 300 considered “dangerous” — according to data from IQAir. The Punjab government also recorded peaks of over 1,000 on Sunday, which it considered “unprecedented.”
“Weather forecast for the next six days shows that wind patterns will remain the same. Therefore we are closing all government and private primary schools in Lahore for a week,” Jahangir Anwar, a senior environmental protection official in Lahore told AFP.
“All the classes” for children up to the age of 10, “public, private & special education... shall remain closed for one week” from Monday until Saturday, read a local government decision seen by AFP.
The decision added that the situation will be assessed again next Saturday to determine whether to extend the school closure.
“This smog is very harmful for children. Masks should be mandatory in schools. We are keeping an eye on the health of children in senior classes,” Punjab senior minister Marriyum Aurangzeb told a news conference Sunday.
Smog counters have been established in hospitals, she added.
Breathing the toxic air has catastrophic health consequences, with the WHO saying strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases can be triggered by prolonged exposure.
Spanish royals visit flood-hit region as fresh downpours loom
VALENCIA: Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia on Sunday just after midday arrived in the Valencia region where devastating floods have killed more than 200 people, television images showed.
The royals, accompanied by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, visited Paiporta — one of the worst affected towns — and are due to move on to Chiva, another battered town close to Valencia, later in the day.
Hopes of finding survivors ebbed five days after torrents of muddy water wrecked towns and infrastructure in Spain’s worst such disaster in decades.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the Valencia region, where thousands of security and emergency services frantically cleared debris and mud in the search for bodies.
Describing “the worst natural disaster in the recent history of our country,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said it was the second deadliest flood in Europe this century.
Sanchez was expected to accompany King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia as well as the Valencia region leader Carlos Mazon on a visit to the areas affected by the floods on Sunday, according to the premier’s office. The exact program of their visit has not yet been made public.
The monarchs’ visit comes as Spain’s meterological agency issued a fresh warning for heavy downpours in the Valencia region.
Up to 100 liters per square meter (22 gallons per square yard) of water could fall in the province of Castellon and the area surrounding the city of Valencia, the agency forecast.
It also sounded the alarm for torrential rain that may cause flooding in the southern province of Almeria, advising residents not to travel unless strictly necessary.
Restoring order and distributing aid to destroyed towns and villages — some of which have been cut off from food, water and power since Tuesday’s torrent — is a priority.
With Spain deploying an extra 10,000 troops, police and civil guards to the Valencia region, the country was carrying out its largest deployment of military and security force personnel in peacetime, Sanchez said.
Officers made around 20 arrests on Saturday evening for thievery and acts of looting, police said, with the authorities pledging to crack down on those taking advantage of the disaster to commit crimes.
Authorities — including Mazon — have come under fire over the warning systems before the floods, and some stricken residents have complained that the response to the disaster has been too slow.
“I am aware the response is not enough, there are problems and severe shortages... towns buried by mud, desperate people searching for their relatives... we have to improve,” Sanchez said.
In the ground-zero towns of Alfafar and Sedavi, AFP reporters saw no soldiers while residents shovelled mud from their homes and firefighters pumped water from garages and tunnels.
“Thank you to the people who have come to help us, to all of them, because from the authorities: nothing,” a furious Estrella Caceres, 66, told AFP in Sedavi.
In Chiva, a town west of Valencia which Spanish media reported may be visited by the monarchs, Danna Daniella said she had been cleaning her restaurant for three days straight and was still in shock.
“It feels like the end of the world,” the woman in her 30s said.
She said she was haunted by memories of the people trapped by the raging floodwaters “asking for help and there was nothing we could do.”
“It drives you crazy. You look for answers and you don’t find them.”
With telephone and transport networks severely damaged, establishing a precise figure of missing people is difficult.
Sanchez said electricity had been restored to 94 percent of homes affected by power outages and that around half of the cut telephone lines had been repaired.
Transport Minister Oscar Puente told El Pais daily that certain places would probably remain inaccessible by land for weeks.
Ordinary citizens carrying food, water and cleaning equipment have continued their grassroots initiative to assist the recovery, although authorities have urged people to stay at home to avoid congestion on the roads that would hamper the work of emergency services.
On Sunday, the Valencian government limited the number of volunteers authorized to travel to the city’s southern suburbs to 2,000 and restricted access to 12 localities.
The storm that sparked the floods on Tuesday formed as cold air moved over the warm waters of the Mediterranean and is common for this time of year.
But scientists warn climate change driven by human activity is increasing the ferocity, length and frequency of such extreme weather events.
Emergency services late on Saturday issued an updated toll of 213 people confirmed killed — 210 in the Valencia region, two in neighboring Castilla-La Mancha and one in Andalusia in the south.
Authorities have warned the toll could yet rise, as vehicles trapped in tunnels and underground car parks are cleared.
Grenade attack wounds several in Indian-run Kashmir: police
- The Press Trust of India (PTI) showed dozens of armed police and soldiers cordoning off the area in the Himalayan city
- At least 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in Kashmir, battling an insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels since 1989
Srinagar: Indian-run Kashmir’s chief minister on Sunday condemned a “deeply disturbing” grenade attack on a busy market in the main city of Srinagar, which police and media reported left several wounded.
“A grenade attack on innocent shoppers at the ‘Sunday market’ in Srinagar is deeply disturbing,” Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah said in a statement.
“There can be no justification for targeting innocent civilians.”
Abdullah did not say how many were wounded, but a senior police officer, who was not authorized to speak to journalists, said nine people were wounded, all civilians.
The Press Trust of India (PTI) showed dozens of armed police and soldiers cordoning off the area in the Himalayan city.
The Hindustan Times quoted Tasneem Showkat, a doctor at Srinagar’s SMHS Hospital, as saying at least eight injured had been taken for treatment.
“The injured include eight men and one woman,” Showkat said, the newspaper reported. “All are so far stable.”
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947 and is home to a long-running insurgency.
At least 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in Kashmir, battling an insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels since 1989.
The grenade attack comes a day after Indian troops killed three suspected militants in two separate firefights.
In October, gunmen ambushed an army vehicle and killed five people, including three soldiers.
That came a week after seven people were shot dead near a construction site for a strategic road tunnel to Ladakh, a high-altitude Himalayan region bordering China.
New Delhi regularly blames Pakistan for arming militants and helping them launch attacks, an allegation Islamabad denies.
“The security apparatus must do everything possible to end this spurt of attacks at the earliest so that people can go about their lives without any fear,” Abdullah added.
