Legal analyst's comment on Trump judge raises MAGA eyebrows (2024)

Followers of former President Donald Trump's MAGA movement are ridiculing legal analyst Andrew Weissmann for proclaiming a "man crush" on New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.

Merchan is overseeing Trump's hush money criminal trial in New York, which was nearing its conclusion with the jury deliberating on Wednesday night. The former president has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Weissman, a New York University law professor and former FBI general counsel, gushed about the judge during a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC, praising Merchan for his "judicial temperament" while revealing his "man crush" during an interview with host Andrea Mitchell.

"With respect to Judge Merchan—I mean, I am like now, you know...I have, like, a man crush on him," Weissmann said. "He is such a great judge that it's hard to see that the jurors wouldn't have the same impression."

"You just keep on thinking, if you looked in a dictionary of for, like, 'judicial temperament,' that's what you'd get," he added. "It has just been such an impeccably fair trial."

Trump supporters disagreed with Weissmann's assessment of Merchan and took the opportunity to mock him while sharing video clips of the moment in posts to X, formerly Twitter.

"So cringe," wrote Republican strategist Michael Caputo, who served as a Department of Health and Human Services official during the Trump administration.

"Juan doesn't seem like he'd be into you, @AWeissmann_," MAGA lawyer Mike Davis wrote.

"Behold the impartiality of MSNBC," posted self-described "comedian filmmaker documentarian" Eric Abbenante, a supporter of Trump's discredited claims of massive fraud in the 2020 election. "TDS ['Trump Derangement Syndrome'] is one helluva drug."

Several commenters pointed out that Weissmann previously worked alongside Special Counsel Robert Mueller during his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trump and his supporters often refer to the Mueller investigation as "Russiagate" or a "collusion hoax," although the investigation did not exonerate the former president from claims that he colluded with the Russian government.

"Russiagate architect Andrew Weissman: 'I have like a man crush on Judge Merchan... he is such a great judge," the Johnny MAGA account wrote. "Tell me again how this isn't political."

"Not just that, but one of the people who ran the Russia collusion hoax Mueller probe!" conservative journalist Mollie Hemingway wrote in response to a MAGA War Room post on Weissmann's "man crush."

"Same man ANDREW WEISSMAN that participated in the Russian Collusion Hoax!" @CrystalBlueRed posted.

Newsweek reached out for comment to Weissmann and Trump's office via email on Wednesday night.

During an MSNBC appearance earlier this month, Weissmann expressed concerns about a wave of GOP lawmakers appearing outside the Manhattan courthouse and speculated that the former president might attempt to influence jurors with social media posts before deliberations began, calling it Merchan's "final" trial challenge.

Weissmann suggested that Merchan had met the challenge during his interview on Wednesday, praising the judge for presenting jurors with "normal" jury instructions and both legal teams for being "incredibly fair" during the trial.

"Just going back to Judge Merchan, you know, huge kudos to him," said Weissmann. "But also the defense lawyers and the prosecutors for, you know, handling this I think by all accounts in an incredibly fair way... Regardless of what one side or the other might want to say about the result."