Trump, the 'hater' baiter

Daily Point

Trump’s ‘hate’ complaint

There is a familiar echo when Donald Trump slams a judge with a Latino name who’s presiding over a court case involving Trump’s private money and image.

“He’s a hater” who is biased against Trump, the message goes.

That was the deal seven years ago when Trump was running for the White House for the first time. The case at the time involved his dubious “Trump University” — where a federal district judge, Gonzalo Curiel, approved after the election a $25 million settlement with ex-students, thus heading off a civil fraud trial.

"I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater," Trump said during a May 2016 rally in San Diego. "His name is Gonzalo Curiel and he is not doing the right thing." And, Trump claimed repeatedly in other forums, it was no coincidence that Curiel was “Mexican,” even though he’s an American of Mexican descent born in Indiana.

Trump has been recycling some of the same bile-as-performance-art in the new Manhattan prosecution of the ex-president presided over by acting State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.

One recent Trump posting is especially true to form — and not only for his spelling the judge’s name wrong but for other inaccuracies — such as the idea that prosecutors pick judges for their cases.

“His name is Juan Manuel Marchan, was hand-picked by [Manhattan D.A. Alvin] Bragg & the Prosecutors, & is the same person who ‘railroaded’ my 75 year old former CFO, Allen Weisselberg” — who in fact pleaded guilty to 15 felony counts including grand larceny, tax fraud and falsifying business records.

That, like the Trump University case, was a civil matter involving alleged shenanigans at a Trump business enterprise. The former president complained Merchan treated Trump’s companies “VICIOUSLY.”

Then comes Trump’s signature claim — that Merchan “HATES ME.”

Fortunately, Trump hasn’t yet explicitly attacked Merchan’s ethnicity. But skeptics of the 45th president might wish to do the math: The 60-year-old judge was born in Bogotá, Colombia, was brought to New York City at age 6, and grew up in Jackson Heights, in Queens — the same borough where the ex-president was raised. Merchan is a graduate of Hofstra Law School.

Every fresh Trump story has its echoes by now. But in this case, his preemptive hostility toward judges may be off the mark if it’s the jurors who decide his fate.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Pencil Point

The Trump show

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Final Point

Nassau map, petitions still face test

Designating petitions are due to be filed with election boards next week for the June primaries in county and local races across the state. Signature gathering began five weeks ago.

But for the Nassau County Legislature, district lines appear to remain unsettled. At least one legal challenge is expected from Democrats and civil rights activists dissatisfied with the 10-year map approved by the chamber’s Republican majority on Feb. 27.

Some time in the next two weeks, sources told The Point, court actions are anticipated, both from David Mejias, the lawyer who headed the Democratic group on the county’s Temporary Districting Advisory Commission, and from the New York Civil Liberties Union.

While Mejias is focused on challenging the map as a GOP partisan gerrymander by violating standards of contiguity and “communities of interest,” the NYCLU is reportedly looking at voting rights laws and the way minority voters are taken into account.

In addition, Fred Brewington, the Nassau-based civil rights attorney, is expected to be somewhere in the mix on challenging the plan. “We are all in conversation,” he said of the interested parties. The outcome could mean collective or separate filings, he said.

For the filing schedule, nobody in either major party seems to be ringing alarm bells just yet. Last year, in state and federal legislative races, petitions filed under a proposed map remained valid even though the district boundaries were drastically reshuffled under court order. So for better or worse, the system adjusts to these delays when courts intervene.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison