Judge Merchan's Daughter Raked in $12.7 Million in First Six Months of 2024

Loren Merchan, owner of Authentic Campaigns, nearly doubled her business from this same time two years ago. Having daddy preside over the New York trial of Donald Trump sure does help!

Democrats have paid the company owned by the politically active daughter of compromised Judge Juan Merchan at least $12.7 million in the first half of this year.

Federal election reports show Authentic Campaigns, the consulting firm owned by Loren Merchan, raked in the windfall between January 1 and July 1, 2024. Her father currently presides over Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Donald Trump in New York City.

The sum represents an 86 percent increase in Authentic Campaigns receipts from the same time period in 2022. Democratic elected officials, candidates, and PACs reported $6.8 million in payments to Merchan between January 1 and July 1, 2022, the last general election cycle.

According to the firm’s website, Authentic Campaigns specializes in “digital marketing and fundraising.”

The boom in business coincided with Trump’s six-week trial in Merchan’s Manhattan courtroom, which began on April 15. Prior to the start of the jury trial, Merchan repeatedly sided with Bragg while demonstrating open hostility to the former president. Merchan imposed a gag order early on and then proceeded to deny nearly every defense motion.

Two weeks into the trial, Merchan held Trump in contempt for violating the gag order.

Merchan, of course, should never have been near the case but he thwarted every legal attempt to get him removed.

Last year, amid details of Loren Merchan’s financial ties to top Democrats including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the judge’s own small donations to Democrats, Trump asked Merchan to step aside. “Your Honor’s daughter’s close connection to President Trump’s political adversaries and her work at, and financial interest in, a firm which is deeply engrained with Democratic politics raises real and legitimate concerns about this Court’s impartiality,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in May 2023 shortly after Merchan was assigned to handle the case. “The financial well-being of Your Honor’s daughter depends at least in part on the success of Authentic. And Authentic’s business model is one that requires it to attack President Trump and support individuals and causes in direct competition with President Trump.”

A few months later, Merchan denied Trump’s request to recuse himself. Accusations his daughter stood to profit off the case, Merchan stated, was “speculative and hypothetical.”

Once again, the Columbian-born Merchan was wrong.

A Client List or Trump Enemies List—or Both?

Some of the former president’s biggest foes are on Merchan’s growing client list. Representative Adam Schiff’s campaign has paid Merchan’s firm roughly $8 million so far this year; the Trump-Russia collusion hoaxster currently is running against former MLB player Steve Garvey to replace the late Dianne Feinstein in the U.S. Senate.

Schiff arguably is Merchan’s most lucrative client dating back to the start of Authentic Campaigns in 2019. During his role in leading the impeachment of Trump in 2019 and 2020, Schiff paid Merchan’s firm $4 million for digital consulting and various services.

Freshman New York Congressman Dan Goldman has paid Authentic Campaigns $57,000 this year to place digital ads. Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, in November 2023 said Trump “has to be eliminated” and “cannot see public office again.” Before winning his seat in Congress, Goldman served as a lawyer on the first impeachment trial of Trump.

Other big-name clients include Democratic senators Jon Tester, Corey Booker, Tina Smith, and Tammy Baldwin; all have paid Merchan at least six figures so far this year.

After a jury convicted Trump in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the case, Booker called the verdict, “a moment of justice.” 

It appears fake kidnapping victim and Trump antagonist Gretchen Whitmer is a new Authentic Campaigns client. “Fight Like Hell,” the PAC the Michigan governor launched in 2023, is paying Merchan’s firm an $8,000 per month retainer for “digital consulting.” The first recorded payment in the amount of $76,035 from Whitmer’s PAC to Merchan is dated July 2023, three months after Judge Merchan got the case.

Another Bite of the Apple?

Trump’s sentencing was originally scheduled for this month, but Merchan postponed that proceeding until September pending consideration of a motion to vacate the conviction based on the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.

While the move may appear magnanimous, no doubt Merchan has ulterior motives in delaying the historic event until the height of the 2024 campaign season.

After all, another appearance before Trump a few months before Election Day can only be good for the Merchan family business.