When Donald Trump appears in Judge Juan Mercant’s courtroom on Tuesday, April 4, to face the charges against him, it will be a first for a former US president, but familiar ground about the veteran judge serving in Manhattan’s misdemeanor court.

Merchan oversaw the Trump Organization trial last year that ended with a jury convicting the real estate company of tax evasion and fines, and one of its longtime executives, Allen Weiselberg, pleading guilty and being sent to prison.

Trump is expected to appear before Mercan on Tuesday following an investigation into payments to the pornographic actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 US presidential election. Trump has been charged, but the exact charges against him have not been made public.

Susan Netsles, a member of Trump’s legal team, told Reuters the former president would plead not guilty.

Merchan imposed on the Trump Organization to pay $1.6 million after the company was sentenced in December. The judge also sentenced Weiselberg, a longtime Trump aide but the key prosecution witness in the trial, to five months in prison.

Yesterday Friday, Trump, who had not been charged in the case of his company, attacked Merchan from his platform, Truth Social.

“The Judge ‘assigned’ my Witch Hunt Case, a ‘Case’ THAT HAS NEVER EXISTED BEFORE, HATES ME,” wrote Trump, who has launched a campaign to return to the presidency in 2024. “He intimidated Allen, something a judge is not allowed to do, and he treated my companies, who did not ‘beg’, WILD.”

Mercan did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump Organization trial is not Merchan’s only recent meeting with people in the former president’s inner circle. Mercan is also presiding over a criminal case involving Steve Bannon, a former Trump campaign official and former White House adviser who has pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering, conspiracy and fraud in connection with a nonprofit that was raising money to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.

Merchan has been a judge in Manhattan’s misdemeanor court since 2009, having previously served in magistrate court and family court in the Bronx.
The judge was born in Colombia and moved to the United States at the age of six where he grew up in Queens, New York, according to news reports. Merchan graduated from Hofstra University Law School and began his career in the U.S. attorney’s office that is now impeaching Trump.

Merchan was the president in 2022 in the so-called “Soccer Mom Madam” Anna Christina case, which earned heavy headlines in the New York media. Christina was accused of running a luxury brothel from her Manhattan apartment and eventually pleaded guilty.

In 2011, Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York recommended that President Barack Obama appoint Merchan as a federal judge in Brooklyn, saying he would be the first federal judge to be born in Colombia, according to the New York Law Journal. Mercan was not appointed to this position.