The Manhattan judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money case has received “dozens’’ of threats, as has his family, since the ex-president’s arraignment Tuesday, according to a report.
A special NYPD detail and state court officers have now beefed up security for Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, as well as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and other court officials tied to Trump’s case, NBC News said in a report Wednesday.
Threats to Merchan’s courthouse chambers have flooded in since Trump was arraigned on a 34-count felony indictment accusing the former president of falsifying records to allegedly cover up hush money payments to a porn star before the 2016 election.
Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges and is due to return to court in December.
Merchan cautioned Trump during the proceedings not to fire up his supporters with incendiary remarks.
Before Trump faced Merchan in court, the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., on Tuesday shared a photograph of the judge and his daughter on social media — alleging that she worked on Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’s presidential campaigns.
“Seems relevant…yet another connection in this hand-picked democrat show trial. The BS never ends folks,” Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter and Truth Social.
Trump himself later told supporters Tuesday night that Merchan is “a Trump-hating judge with the Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [D-NY) accused Trump, 76, of getting his backers potentially dangerously riled up during the rally, which was at his Mar-a-Lago estate after his arraignment.
“He is publicly intimidating a judge and pointing a spotlight on their family to his supporters — many of whom have admitted in court to committing violence in his name,” Ocasio-Cortes said on Twitter.
“He knows what he’s doing,” she wrote.
In a statement on the “Today” show Wednesday, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina downplayed the comments from the Mar-a-Lago rally.
Tacopina said Trump “has not done anything to try to incite violence.”
Additional reporting by Elizabeth Rosner and Craig McCarthy