The judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial wasn’t present on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

But when Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz took on Attorney General Merrick Garland in a blistering round of questioning before the House Judiciary Committee, Judge Juan Merchan might as well have been in the room himself.

And it would not have looked good.

Merchan’s handling of the Trump trial — with its Kafkaesque guilty verdict on Thursday — became a focal point of Gaetz’s line of questioning.

The judge himself infamously donated to now-President Joe Biden’s election campaign in 2020 — in violation of New York judicial ethics rules, which expressly prohibit judges from “soliciting funds for, paying an assessment to, or making a contribution to a political organization or candidate.”

And the judge’s daughter runs a Democratic political consulting firm that has made money working for some of the most viciously anti-Trump Democrats in the land, including, according to Newsweek, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, House Minority Leader and certifiable Democratic lunatic Hakeem Jefferies, and California Gov. and presidential wannabe Gavin Newsom.

Check out Gaetz’s grilling of the attorney general below. The whole thing is well worth watching, but the exchange about Merchan’s obvious conflicts of interest starts about the 1:25 mark.

(Note: The “Pomeranz” book Gaetz refers to is “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account,” a 2023 work that, as Time magazine put it, approvingly, “likens Trump to John Gotti, a former mob boss who used every trick to avoid culpability and maintain one degree of deniability while building a massive criminal enterprise.”)

Matt Gaetz faces off against Merrick Garland:

“You come in here and you lodge this attack that it’s a conspiracy theory that there’s coordinated lawfare against Trump, and then when we say fine, just give us the documents!” pic.twitter.com/402qztvdfx

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 4, 2024

“You were a judge, once nominated to the highest court in our country,” the congressman said. “When you were a judge, I’m just curious, did you ever make political donations to partisan candidates?”

Garland, who was nominated for the Supreme Court in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama but was denied even a hearing by the determination of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, answered with a stony, “No.”

“And you didn’t because that would create the potential appearance of impropriety,” Gaetz said.

“I didn’t because there’s a federal rule barring federal judges from making contributions,” the attorney general responded.

Right. And that answer — technically correct, maybe, but a deliberate distraction from the point — was an example of exactly the kinds of hair-splitting, amoral technicalities Garland employed through the remainder of the exchange about Merchan, and about everything else Gaetz asked about.

“I’m well aware that you’re not asking a hypothetical, you’re asking me to comment on a jury verdict in another jurisdiction which has to be respected,” he said as the congressman persisted. “I won’t comment on it.”

Gaetz switched gears slightly.

“Let me ask you this question about your time as a judge,” he said. “Was there ever a time when you were a judge when you had a family member who was personally profiting off of the notoriety of the case that was before your court?”

Garland fell back on his dignity.

“It’s very clear here you’re asking me to comment on a case in another jurisdiction …”

Gaetz was having none of it.

“You are aware that Judge Merchan’s daughter was profiting off of this prosecution,” he said. “You are aware that that creates the appearance of impropriety. You know the very reason there’s a federal rule against judges giving donations is because it is the very attack on the judicial process that we’re concerned about.”

It was ugly, but Garland brought it on himself.

His appearance before the committee was intended to justify the Department of Justice’s refusal to turn over audio recordings of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, as The New York Times reported.

(That was the interview that convinced Hur that the president of the United States, a man who holds the most powerful job in the world, would be viewed by potential jurors as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” — a nice way of saying a doddering fool with a dribbling lip and prune juice on his shirt.)

But in a bellicose opening statement, Garland went out of his way to attack the “conspiracy theory” that his department is coordinating with local Democratic prosecutors in the ongoing legal warfare being waged against Trump — in Manhattan criminal court, in a civil lawsuit by the New York attorney general’s office and in Fulton County, Georgia.

Gaetz took that issue head on, challenging Garland to agree to produce any communications between the DOJ and the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County DA Fani Willis.

Naturally, Garland responded with a smokescreen, summoning up indignation at the very idea that anyone could suspect him and his department of lacking integrity — though he and his DOJ have done just about everything possible since 2021 to convince conservative Americans they lack both integrity and a commitment to the rule of law.

Merchan and his daughter are just the latest, most blatant examples of the bleeding wounds Democrats have inflicted on American system of justice.

Figures such as Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and the execrable special counsel/Democratic attack dog Jack Smith have done their part too in recent years after being passed the batons of disgrace from the likes of James Comey, James Clapper and John Brennan.

(And that doesn’t even get into the lower levels, like the adulterous lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.)

In short, Americans — and not just Trump supporters — have plenty of reasons, going back almost a decade now, to suspect a conspiracy is afoot against Trump, whether it’s the DOJ coordinating with state-level prosecutors or simply agencies of the deep state spoonfeeding bile to one another and the establishment media outlets that support them.

If you haven’t watched that Gaetz-Garland video, do yourself a favor and watch it. If you have watched it, do yourself a favor and watch it again.

In Garland’s tortured answers, the conspiracy targeting Trump — and every conservative American — is on full display, and Judge Juan Merchan is exhibit A.

Story Editor