Former Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, issued a warning on Friday about former President Donald Trump's latest attacks against Judge Juan Merchan and his family.
Judge Merchan is overseeing the trial focusing on the hush money payment Trump allegedly made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump last March with falsifying business documents, accusing him of breaking the law by making a payment to Daniels to prevent her from speaking publicly about her claims of having an affair with him in 2006.
Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has denied having an affair with Daniels.
Ahead of the trial, which Merchan scheduled for April 15, the former president has taken to Truth Social, his social media platform, to share attacks against Merchan and his family, including his daughter, Loren Merchan, who has been subject to several attacks in recent posts.
His remarks sparked a warning from Cheney, a prominent anti-Trump Republican, who warned about his comments potentially leading to "threats of violence" for Merchan's family in a post to X, formerly Twitter, on Friday morning.
"Trump is repeatedly and maliciously attacking a judge's daughter on social media. He knows this will bring threats of violence against her and the judge. Trump is depraved and unstable. This unconscionable behavior shows yet again why he is unfit for any office," she posted.
After the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his alleged role in it, invoking the former president's ire. She ultimately lost the GOP primary election in 2022 to Trump-backed Representative Harriet Hageman by more than 37 percentage points. Cheney remains a vocal critic of Trump and the growth of his influence in the Republican Party.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign for comment via email.
Trump's attacks against Merchan's family has sparked a wave of criticism.
"Trump puts a target not only Judge Merchan in the criminal case in Manhattan but on his daughter. This is a rank effort at intimidating the judge by threatening his family. It merits a gag order but also serious pushback from GOP leadership--which we know won't come," Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama during the Obama administration, wrote earlier this week.
"Anyone else would be locked up if we were attacking a judge's daughter during a trial," Ashton Pittman, editor of the Mississippi Free Press, wrote Wednesday.
"Trump's criminal defense counsel now have a tough decision. How do you continue to represent someone who is engaging in this conduct when charged with essentially the same encouragement of violence on 1/6 (and before and after)," wrote legal analyst Andrew Weissmann on Friday.
In Trump's most recent post on Thursday, the former president wrote, "Judge Juan Merchan is totally compromised, and should be removed from this TRUMP Non-Case immediately. His Daughter, Loren, is a Rabid Trump Hater, who has admitted to having conversations with her father about me, and yet he gagged me."
He has called for Merchan to recuse himself from the case over his daughter's political work.
In a Tuesday post on Truth Social, the former president wrote about Loren, "His daughter is a senior executive at a Super Liberal Democrat firm that works for Adam "Shifty" Schiff, the Democrat National Committee, (Dem)Senate Majority PAC, and even Crooked Joe Biden."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
fairness meter
To Rate This Article
About the writer
Andrew Stanton is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in Maine. His role is reporting on U.S. politics and social issues. ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
