assigned"

Colombian-born judge Juan Merchán, assigned to case against former president Donald Trump (2017-2021) in New York for falsification of commercial documents, and his family have received more than a dozen threats through calls and emails, local media point out.

(See: This is the judge of Colombian origin who has investigated Donald Trump).

Most of the threats and defamatory calls, which appear to have come from outside New York state and are being investigated, occurred within 24 hours of Merchán reading the 34 charges filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office against Trump, last Tuesday, April 4, of which the former president pleaded not guilty.

After learning that Merchán would be the judge who would read him the charges of the Prosecutor’s Office, Trump wrote on his social network Truth that the magistrate hated him.

(See: Who is Karen McDougal, the second woman mentioned in the Trump case).

Merchán, who immigrated to New York from Colombia when he was six years old, previously chaired the Trump Organization tax fraud trial, property of the former president; he oversaw a case against his former adviser Steve Bannon and sentenced Allen Weisselberg, one of the businessman’s most loyal squires, to prison.

(See: Trump: How his impeachment can benefit him on the presidential run.)

Prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who has led the investigation against the former Republican president, and other staff from his office have continued to receive threats, so the Police have increased security for them, the media added.

(See: Trump says that the accusations against him are to interfere with elections).

According to the accusation, the former president orchestrated a plot to pay for the silence of three people who could harm his campaign for the Presidency in 2016, including former porn actress Stormy Daniels.

At a press conference in Miami, after hearing the charges against him, Trump stated that “the lunatics, maniacs and perverts of the radical left accused and arrested him without any reason“.