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    I left my suit in San Francisco: thieves swipe bags from Adam Schiff’s car

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    San Francisco has earned an unwelcome national reputation for car burglaries, which Adam Schiff was reminded of the hard way: the Democratic representative had his luggage swiped from his car while it was parked in a downtown garage.With his formal clothing gone, Schiff ended up at a fundraising dinner Thursday for his US Senate campaign dressed like he was headed to a Los Angeles Dodgers game – in shirtsleeves and an insulated vest. Others who attended the event were mostly decked out in suit jackets and ties.Schiff’s campaign confirmed the burglary and declined further comment, citing an ongoing investigation.“Yes, they took my bags,” the representative lamented to the San Francisco Chronicle.Statistically, reported auto break-ins are down in San Francisco, but vehicles with busted windows leaving sprinkles of broken glass remain a common sight in the city. Visitors and residents are constantly reminded to remove valuables from parked cars.It was advice Schiff neglected to follow.In August, the city’s police chief announced a crackdown on auto smash-and-grabs. The San Francisco police department reported nearly 900 break-ins in February, down from 1,850 in July. There were more than 3,000 reported thefts in September 2022. More

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      Two Turning Point USA members admit to assaulting queer professor

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      Two employees of a rightwing youth organization who harassed and assaulted a queer professor last year agreed to a diversion program and admitted they were guilty of the acts.Turning Point USA’s Kalen D’Almeida and Braden Ellis accosted the Arizona State University (ASU) professor David Boyles last October, hounding him about his sexuality and the classes he teaches. Boyles is an English instructor and the co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona.At one point, D’Almeida pushed Boyles to the ground, bloodying his face. Boyles posted an image of his injuries online at the time, saying his physical injuries were “relatively minor” but that he felt “angry, violated, embarrassed and despairing at the fact that we have come to normalize this kind of harassment and violence” against the LGBTQ+ community.Both D’Almeida and Ellis signed diversion agreements with prosecutors that acknowledge they committed the offenses and enter them into an educational program to avoid convictions, Phoenix TV station 12News reported.D’Almeida, who was charged with misdemeanors for assault, harassment and disorderly conduct, and Ellis, charged with misdemeanor harassment, had previously pleaded not guilty and, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, the organization said Ellis, who works as its cameraman, would pursue charges against Boyles.Boyles told the Guardian he was “disappointed but not surprised” that the county attorney pursued “the lightest possible slap on the wrist” for the Turning Point employees, but that he was gratified to see that “the two hateful losers who stalked, harassed, and assaulted me at my place of work last October have admitted their guilt”.“I hope this incident has made people aware that Turning Point USA does not care about free speech or serious debate but instead trades in hateful and bigoted rhetoric solely to ‘create content’ for their endless tedious podcasts and to stoke fear and violence in the real world,” Boyles said in a statement. “And I hope administrators at Arizona State and other universities will work to protect their LGBTQ+ students, staff, and faculty by no longer indulging and coddling organizations like TPUSA.”Turning Point USA said in a statement that it was “uninvolved in this matter, and the decision on the correct legal course had been left entirely to our reporters and their counsel”.“To be clear, Kalen and Braden have not been found guilty of anything in court. Diversion is a legal tactic where all charges are dismissed, and the language is boilerplate and standard to all such cases,” a TPUSA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet, said. “The fact is our reporters would not be permitted a jury trial for such a low-level misdemeanor, but instead be subject to a bench decision from a judge, Tyler Kissell, who doesn’t even have a law degree, was vice-president of the ASU chapter of Young Democrats, ran for state senate as a Democrat, and whose recent work experience includes teaching pre-school. Given these realities, we entirely understand why they decided to pursue this route.”ASU’s president, Michael Crow, previously condemned the attack on Boyles and has tried to get Turning Point to remove the university’s professors from its “professor watchlist” because it prompted harassment and threats against them.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We are looking at all of our options now that the TP employees have plead[ed] guilty to their crimes,” Crow said in an email on Tuesday. “This includes direct engagement with TP to see what they are doing with their criminal employees.”Turning Point USA plays a large role in Republican politics, especially in Arizona, where it is based. The group boosted Donald Trump’s candidacy and is aligned with the Maga movement. Its leaders, including founder and executive director Charlie Kirk, are prominent conservative commentators, and it has chapters on college campuses around the country. Multiple Arizona lawmakers have held jobs at the organization over the years, including state representative Austin Smith, who recently resigned from Turning Point after allegations he submitted forged signatures of voters in his petitions to run for re-election.The organization has also clashed with the university community in a few instances, including over an event that brought Kirk and other conservatives to campus to speak. More

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      Trump on Trial: National Enquirer boss dishes on Trump

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      You’re reading the Guardian US’s free Trump on Trial newsletter. To get the latest court developments delivered to your inbox, sign up here.On the docket: Pecker tells allDavid Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, returned to the witness stand on Tuesday as a witness for the prosecution and explained to jurors how he coordinated with Donald Trump and his team to bury scandals about the then candidate during the 2016 campaign.Pecker laid out how he’d repeatedly paid to purchase stories about Trump’s alleged marital infidelities before keeping them from reaching the light of day – a scheme known as “catch-and-kill” that prosecutors claim Trump illegally falsified business records to conceal in order to help his presidential campaign.Pecker said he had a “great relationship” with Trump that dated back to the late 1980s – then spent the next hours of testimony damning him with not-so-faint praise.Pecker described Trump as “very knowledgeable”, “very detail-oriented”, “very cautious and very frugal”, and “almost a micromanager” in his business dealings. Those complimentary descriptions hurt Trump because prosecutors need to prove that Trump had direct knowledge of the scheme to pay his attorney Michael Cohen back for his payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels by falsely labeling them as business expenses.Pecker then discussed a 2015 meeting he had at Trump Tower with Trump, Cohen and Hope Hicks, a top Trump campaign official, where they asked him what he could do “to help the campaign”.He promised to be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” to find out about “women selling stories” about Trump, and work to kill them, because Trump was “well known as the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women” (another unhelpful compliment for Trump, who had been married to his third wife, Melania, for a decade at that point). He then testified that he routinely coordinated with Cohen at Trump’s behest to run negative stories about Trump’s political foes. It’s a misdemeanor under New York law to conspire to promote the election of someone by unlawful means.Pecker then walked through two schemes to catch and kill those stories. The first was paying Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin $30,000 for the rights to a story about Trump fathering a child with a maid who worked in the building. When Pecker told Cohen the Enquirer would pay the fee itself (even though he didn’t plan to run the story), he said Cohen told him “the boss would be very pleased”.Pecker then testified that he bought the rights to the story of Karen McDougal, a former model who claims she had an affair with Trump.Pecker said Trump called him once about McDougal, but that most of his interactions were with Cohen.“Michael was very agitated – it looked like he was getting a lot of pressure,” Pecker said shortly before court adjourned for the day.Pecker will return to the witness stand when the trial resumes on Thursday. He’ll likely finish testifying about McDougal and move on to explain his role in connecting Trump’s team to Stormy Daniels.Judge rips Trump’s lawyer during contempt hearingView image in fullscreenOn Tuesday morning, before the trial resumed with Pecker’s testimony, Judge Juan Merchan held a hearing to determine whether he should find Trump in contempt for repeatedly violating his gag order prohibiting the former president from attacking potential witnesses and jurors.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Hugo Lowell reported from the courtroom, it didn’t go well for Trump’s team.Merchan was deeply skeptical of arguments from Trump attorney Todd Blanche, expressing frustration that Blanche wasn’t answering his questions about Trump’s specific social media posts, and rebuking him for his arguments.“Mr Blanche, you’re losing all credibility, I have to tell you right now,” Merchan said at one point. “You’re losing all credibility with the court.”Prosecutors had highlighted 10 different Trump social media posts in which he’d attacked likely witnesses including Cohen and Daniels and reposted attacks on the jury itself. They also said they’d file paperwork on an 11th example: Trump left court on Monday and immediately went on camera to attack Cohen by name. They said they wouldn’t seek jail time for the violations, but asked Merchan to fine Trump the legal maximum of $1,000 for each violation.Blanche’s arguments that Trump was “allowed to respond to political attacks” and that, in some cases, he was just resharing others’ comments didn’t fly with Merchan.“Give me one. Give me one recent attack he was responding to,” Merchan said when Blanche said Trump was just responding in kind.Merchan didn’t issue a ruling on whether he’d hold Trump in contempt.But Trump was nonetheless furious. After court concluded for the day, the former president complained to reporters that the “totally unconstitutional” gag was blocking him from attacking likely witnesses.“They can say whatever they want, they can lie, but I’m not allowed to say anything. I just have to sit back and look at why a conflicted judge has ordered me to have a gag order,” he said. More

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      A silent Trump glowers and stares during third day of criminal trial

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      With Donald Trump just a few feet away, a potential juror in the criminal case against him summed up the experience in just three words. “This is bizarre,” she said, with just a slight hint of a seasoned New York accent.Bizarre it was. There was a potential juror who once spent the night at one of Trump’s lawyers’ homes more than a decade ago (Trump’s team used one of its peremptory strikes to remove the juror). The microphones didn’t work. The proceedings had to start over when Judge Juan Merchan realized that a court reporter hadn’t been present first thing. And the temperature in the courthouse was so frigid that Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s lawyers, asked Merchan if it would be possible to turn up the temperature “just one degree”.Merchan said no. “It would probably go up 30 degrees,” Merchan said. “It is cold, there’s no question it is cold, but I’d rather be a little cold than sweaty, and really those are the choices.”Trump also would emerge from court at the end of the day and complain about the courtroom temperature. “I’m sitting here for days now, from morning till night in that freezing room. Freezing. Everybody was freezing in there and all of this,” he said.Today was just day three of a blockbuster trial that’s expected to last six weeks once a jury is selected. At the center of it was Donald Trump. Silent. Disarmed of televisions and social media, forced to sit expressionless over a grueling long day in a drab Manhattan courtroom.This was not Donald Trump the business mogul or Donald Trump the 45th president. It was Donald Trump the defendant.Trump was far from the comforts of the White House and Mar-a-Lago as he sat in the courtroom at 100 Centre Street. There was nowhere for him to go and nothing he could say; he was trapped. It was a stark reminder of the long slog Trump faces over the next two months or so as he faces 34 felony charges for falsifying business records.When potential jurors, sitting just feet away, offered critical assessments of him and his presidency, the former president, who is known for his inability to let even the slightest insult go unanswered, sat in silence. As his lawyer Susan Necheles read old social media posts from a potential juror that were highly critical of Trump, he sat silently.Yet it would be a mistake to think that Trump has been tamed or humbled. His Truth Social account has been alive with criticism of the court proceedings, both from his team and himself. Shortly after court convened on Thursday, prosecutors said Trump had violated a gag order in the case an additional seven times; the order prohibits him from making any threats against jurors or potential witnesses.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s ridiculous and it has to stop,” Christopher Conroy, a prosecutor, said.The effort was a reminder that even if Trump is silent while he’s in the courtroom, he’ll continue to use every tool at his disposal outside it. More

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      Homicides in major US cities falling at ‘one of fastest rates ever’ – report

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      Homicides in major US cities are falling at likely “one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded”, a crime analysis has found.Jeff Asher of AH Datalytics, a New Orleans-based data-analytics company focused on criminal justice, education and the non-profit sector, discussed that finding with the Wall Street Journal on Monday after combing through quarterly data recently released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).“There’s just a ton of places that you can point to that are showing widespread, very positive trends,” Asher told the Journal.In the company’s sample of almost 200 cities with varying population sizes, murder was down by 20.8% from the period beginning in January through the end of March of this year when compared with the same time period in 2023, as Asher wrote in a recent Substack post on the subject.Furthermore, in some prominent cities like Washington DC, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, Columbus, Nashville and Philadelphia, murder is down by more than 30%.Asher’s company’s analysis is based on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program, which collects data from local law enforcement agencies across the country. Because participation in the program is voluntary, not all crime is reported, so experts caution it’s not a complete picture.Additionally, FBI data from 2023 will not be audited nor made official until about October. And 2024 data will not be audited and made official until about October 2025.Nonetheless, the preliminary figures reflect particularly heartening news for the US because they suggest that murder had already “plummeted” in 2023 “at one of the fastest declines ever recorded”, according to what Asher wrote in a Substack post late last year.Updated preliminary information suggests those numbers are again falling this year – but at an even faster clip, setting up a return to levels pre-dating the Covid-19 pandemic, when the US experienced a spike in violent crime.The early available statistics also mirror a decline in homicides seen in the 1990s.“Nationally, you’re seeing a very similar situation to what you saw in the mid-to-late 90s. But it’s potentially even larger in terms of the percentages and numbers of the drops,” Asher said.Asher has made it a point to say that even a substantial decline in homicides still involves a collection of “hundreds or thousands of tragedies” for families across the US. But he has said the data paints a picture that is “as encouraging” as can be given that grim reality.It’s not just murder rates that have fallen.Asher said with the exception of motor vehicle theft, all crimes – such as violent crimes, defined as “murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault” and property crime, defined as “burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft and arson” – were down “a considerable amount” in 2023 compared with 2022.At the end of 2023, Asher wrote: “Americans tend to think that crime is rising, but the evidence we have right now points to sizable declines this year (even if there are always outliers). The quarterly data in particular suggests 2023 featured one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the United States in more than 50 years.”Crime has been a principal theme in Republican campaign messaging in recent years. Earlier this year, Donald Trump said without evidence that undocumented immigrants were producing increases in violent crime.“You know, in New York, what’s happening with crime – is it’s through the roof. And it’s called ‘migrant’,” the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee said at a rally in Michigan in February.A 2024 Pew research poll reported “a majority of Americans (57%) [believe] the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime”.Yet national data fails to support Trump’s claim or the public’s stubborn preconceptions that crime is eternally on the rise.Asher wrote: “Tell your friends and family because they probably think crime is surging nationally. And in this case, they’re almost certainly wrong.” More

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      Judge rejects defense efforts to dismiss Hunter Biden’s federal gun case

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      A federal judge in Delaware refused on Friday to throw out a federal gun case against Hunter Biden, rejecting the president’s son’s claim that he is being prosecuted for political purposes as well as other arguments.The US district judge Maryellen Noreika denied defense efforts to scuttle the prosecution charging Hunter Biden with lying about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun that he kept for about 11 days.Hunter Biden’s lawyers had argued the case was politically motivated and asserted that an immunity provision from an original plea deal that fell apart still held. They had also challenged the appointment of the special counsel David Weiss, the US attorney in Delaware, to lead the prosecution.Noreika, who was appointed to the bench by Donald Trump, has not yet ruled on a challenge to the constitutionality of the gun charges.Hunter Biden faces separate tax counts in Los Angeles alleging he failed to pay at least $1.4m in taxes over three years while living an “extravagant lifestyle”, during his days of using drugs. The judge overseeing that case refused to dismiss the charges this month.Biden has pleaded not guilty in both cases. A representative for his legal team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.The president’s son has acknowledged struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine during that period in 2018, but his lawyers have said he didn’t break the law and another nonviolent, first-time offender would not have been charged.The defense attorney Abbe Lowell had argued Hunter Biden was “selectively charged” for improper political purposes. He argued that Weiss “buckled under political pressure” to indict the president’s son amid criticism of the plea deal from Trump and other Republicans.Noreika said in her ruling that Biden’s team had provided “nothing concrete” to support a conclusion that anyone actually influenced the special counsel’s team.“The pressure campaign from congressional Republicans may have occurred around the time that special counsel decided to move forward with indictment instead of pretrial diversion, but the court has been given nothing credible to suggest that the conduct of those lawmakers (or anyone else) had any impact on special counsel,” the judge wrote. “It is all speculation.” More

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      Trump’s latest attempt to delay criminal trial in hush-money case fails

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      A New York appeals court judge on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s latest bid to delay his hush-money criminal trial while he fights a gag order, clearing the way for jury selection to begin next week.Justice Cynthia Kern’s ruling is yet another loss for Trump, who has tried repeatedly to get the trial postponed.Trump’s lawyers had wanted the trial delayed until a full panel of appellate court judges could hear arguments on lifting or modifying a gag order that bans him from making public statements about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the hush-money case.The presumptive Republican nominee’s lawyers argue the gag order is an unconstitutional prior restraint on Trump’s free speech rights while he’s campaigning for president and fighting criminal charges.“The first amendment harms arising from this gag order right now are irreparable,” Trump lawyer Emil Bove said at an emergency hearing on Tuesday in the state’s mid-level appeals court.Bove argued that Trump shouldn’t be muzzled while critics, including his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen and the adult film star Stormy Daniels, routinely assail him. Both are key prosecution witnesses.Steven Wu, the appellate chief for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said there is a “public interest in protecting the integrity of the trial”.“This is not political debate. These are insults,” Wu said of Trump’s statements.The trial judge, Juan M Merchan, issued the gag order last month at the urging of Manhattan prosecutors, who cited Trump’s “long history of making public and inflammatory remarks” about people involved in his legal cases.Merchan expanded the gag order last week to prohibit comments about his own family after Trump lashed out on social media at his daughter, a Democratic political consultant, and made false claims about her.It’s the second of back-to-back days for Trump’s lawyers in the appeals court.On Monday, Lizbeth González, an associate justice, rejected the defense’s request to delay the 15 April trial while Trump seeks to move his case out of heavily Democratic Manhattan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s lawyers framed their gag order appeal as a lawsuit against Merchan. In New York, judges can be sued to challenge some decisions under a state law known as Article 78.Trump has used the tactic before, including against the judge in his civil fraud trial in an unsuccessful last-minute bid to delay that case last fall and again when that judge imposed a gag order on him.Trump’s hush-money criminal case involves allegations that he falsified his company’s records to hide the nature of payments to Cohen, who helped him bury negative stories during his 2016 campaign. Cohen’s activities included paying Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels. His lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.Trump has made numerous attempts to get the trial postponed, leaning into the strategy he proclaimed to TV cameras outside a February pretrial hearing: “We want delays.” More

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      US historians file brief with supreme court rejecting Trump’s immunity claim

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      Fifteen prominent historians filed an amicus brief with the US supreme court, rejecting Donald Trump’s claim in his federal election subversion case that he is immune to criminal prosecution for acts committed as president.Authorities cited in the document include the founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Adams, in addition to the historians’ own work.Trump, the historians said, “asserts that a doctrine of permanent immunity from criminal liability for a president’s official acts, while not expressly provided by the constitution, must be inferred. To justify this radical assertion, he contends that the original meaning of the constitution demands it. But no plausible historical case supports his claim.”Trump faces four federal election subversion charges, arising from his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, fueled by his lie about electoral fraud and culminating in the deadly attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.He also faces 10 election subversion charges in Georgia, 34 charges over hush-money payments in New York, 40 federal charges for retaining classified information, and multimillion-dollar penalties in civil cases over tax fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Despite such unprecedented legal jeopardy, Trump strolled to the Republican nomination to face Biden in November and is seeking to delay all cases until after that election, so that he might dismiss them if he returns to power. His first criminal trial, in the New York hush-money case, is scheduled to begin next Monday.Despite widespread legal and historical opinion that Trump’s immunity claim is groundless, the US supreme court, to which Trump appointed three justices, will consider the claim.Oral arguments are scheduled for 25 April. The court recently dismissed attempts, supported by leading historians, to remove Trump from ballots under the 14th amendment, passed after the civil war to bar insurrectionists from office.In a filing on Monday, the special counsel Jack Smith urged the justices to reject Trump’s immunity claim as “an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government”.Seven of the 15 historians who filed the amicus brief are members of the Historians Council on the Constitution at the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive policy institute at New York University law school.Holly Brewer, a professor of American cultural and intellectual history at the University of Maryland, said: “When designing the presidency, the founders wanted no part of the immunity from criminal prosecution claimed by English kings.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That immunity was at the heart of what they saw as a flawed system. On both the state and national level, they wrote constitutions that held all leaders, including presidents, accountable to the laws of the country. St George Tucker, one of the most prominent judges in the new nation, laid out the principle clearly: everyone is equally bound by the law, from ‘beggars in the streets’ to presidents.”Other signatories to the brief included Jill Lepore of Harvard, author of These Truths, a history of the US; Alan Taylor of the University of Virginia, author of books including American Revolutions, about the years of independence; and Joanne Freeman of Yale, author of The Field of Blood, an influential study of political violence before the civil war.Thomas Wolf, co-counsel on the brief and director of democracy initiatives at the Brennan Center, called Trump’s immunity claim “deeply un-American”, adding: “From the birth of the country through President Clinton’s acceptance of a plea bargain in 2001 [avoiding indictment over the Monica Lewinsky affair], it has been understood that presidents can be prosecuted.“The supreme court must not delay in passing down a ruling in this case.” More

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      New York appeals judge rejects Trump’s request to delay hush-money trial

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      A New York appeals court judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to delay his 15 April hush-money criminal trial while he fights to move the case out of Manhattan.The decision came Monday, a week before jury selection was set to start.Trump’s lawyers had argued at an emergency hearing that the trial should be postponed while they seek a change of venue to move it out of heavily Democratic Manhattan.Trump was ready on Monday to sue the judge in his New York hush-money case a week before the start of the much-anticipated trial, the New York Times reported, detailing yet another attempt by the former president to delay legal proceedings against him.Citing court records indicating the filing of sealed documents and two unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter, the paper said the aim was to delay trial and challenge a gag order imposed by the judge.“Mr Trump’s unorthodox move – essentially an appeal in the form of a lawsuit – is unlikely to succeed, particularly so close to trial,” the paper said.Facing 34 criminal charges related to hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who claimed an affair with him, Trump has pleaded not guilty.He has repeatedly attacked the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, and members of his family, alleging political bias.The trial is set for Manhattan next Monday and will be the first criminal trial involving a former US president.Trump, the Times said, was also expected to ask an appeals court to move the trial out of Manhattan, his home borough before his post-presidency move to Florida but a heavily Democratic area.That gambit was also deemed unlikely to succeed.Harry Litman, a US attorney turned law professor and commentator, said: “Trump’s latest desperate move of personally suing Merchan in the appellate division is reminiscent of his initial gambit in Palm Beach [Florida], where judge [Aileen] Cannon permitted him to take the whole action off track [in his classified information case].“But won’t happen here. Imagine if a criminal defendant could do this … ”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Times said the suit would be an Article 78 action, under New York laws that can be used to challenge state agencies and judges.Trump faces 54 other criminal charges: 40 in Florida, over his retention of classified information after leaving office, and 14 over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election – 10 in Georgia and four in Washington DC.Trump also faces multimillion-dollar penalties in two civil cases, both in New York, one concerning tax fraud and the other for defamation arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Denying all wrongdoing and claiming political persecution, Trump is attempting to delay all cases against him until after the presidential election in November.If he were to defeat Joe Biden and return to the White House, he could ensure the dismissal of federal charges in the classified information case and in four charges of election subversion. State charges would be tougher to deal with.In the New York hush-money case, Merchan last week denied an attempt to delay trial until the US supreme court rules on Trump’s claim of immunity regarding any act committed in office, lodged in his federal election subversion case.Merchan has also rejected one call to recuse himself and is thought overwhelmingly likely to reject another. More