Trump falsely accuses hush-money judge’s daughter of posting picture of him behind bars

Donald Trump made a claim of so-called bias in his New York hush-money trial on Wednesday: the daughter of Juan Merchan, the judge assigned to the case, appeared to have an X account with a profile picture depicting Trump behind bars. 

There’s only one problem: the account’s veracity is dubious at best, with a creation date of April 2023. Analysis of the Twitter ID associated with the account shows that Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter Loren’s known Twitter account, that she has used since 2016, had its name changed and was set private at some point last spring.

The same Twitter ID associated with Loren Merchan’s original Twitter account name, @LorenM426, is now attached to a new name, @LorenM0604, that has a profile picture of Loren Merchan, the same number of followers and posts as the account created in 2016, viewable in archives of the account. It is unclear who runs this account.

Why Merchan changed her user name and went private is also unknown, but it appears to have happened before April 4 last year, when a Breitbart article about her reported that her Twitter account appeared to be deleted, weeks after Judge Merchan was announced as the judge who would preside over what is now likely to be Trump’s first criminal trial next month. The account wasn’t deleted, however; it had changed user handles, according to the Twitter ID and the archived history of the account.

The new X account triggering Trump’s new claims of bias, however, was created just one day after the Breitbart article, which Donald Trump, Jr. shared on Truth Social, was published, on April 5, 2023. This new account has a unique Twitter ID number; archives show it only posted that first week, retweeting four posts from 2019 and 2020 that tagged the real Merchan Twitter account about her consulting work. Because those tweets weren’t actually tagging this new account, the account name is not hyperlinked in the 2019 and 2020 tweets, as evidenced in archived snapshots of the posts. It appears that the person or persons who created this April 2023 account wanted the account to appear to be the real, now renamed, Loren Merchan account. 

After screenshots of the new, dubious, account made the rounds of MAGA X, the account became private and changed its profile picture to one of Kamala Harris as a child. The screenshots showed that this new account had 0 followers as of Tuesday, while the 2016-created account currently has 505 followers, consistent with its history, according to archives.

Trump took to Truth Social Wednesday morning writing, “So let me get this straight. The Judge’s daughter is allowed to post pictures of her ‘dream’ of putting me in jail, the Manhattan D.A. is able to say whatever lies about me he wants, the Judge can violate our Laws and Constitution at every turn, but I am not allowed to talk about the attacks against me, and the Lunatics trying to destroy my life, and prevent me from winning the 2024 Presidential Election, which I am dominating?” By 12:30 p.m. an AP story reported that the prison picture account appeared ‘“to belong to Loren Merchan.” Other outlets, including the Hill, repeated the claim Wednesday afternoon.

Judge Merchan issued a gag order on Tuesday barring Trump from speaking publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff or their family members. The order does not include Trump discussing Judge Merchan or District Attorney Alvin Bragg of New York County or their families.

Judge Merchan ruled against recusing himself from the case in August, after Trump’s lawyers filed a motion in May that argued his daughter’s political consulting work for Authentic Campaigns created a conflict of interest. Authentic Campaigns describes itself as a “full-service digital strategy company that works for progressives who are ready to run innovative and unique digital campaigns.”

A call to the Trump team was not returned at the time of publication. State OCA spokesman Al Baker confirmed The Spectator’s reporting in a statement: “The X, formerly Twitter, account being attributed to Judge Merchan’s daughter no longer belongs to her since she deleted it approximately a year ago. It is not linked to her email address, nor has she posted under that screenname since she deleted the account. Rather, it represents the reconstitution, last April, and manipulation of an account she long ago abandoned.”