NEW YORK – It was an explosive claim from Donald Trump, just weeks before his Manhattan criminal trial is set to begin: He assailed the judge’s daughter on March 27, saying she had used an image of the former president behind bars as a social media profile picture.

The photo made it “completely impossible for me to get a fair trial”, Trump wrote on Truth Social. He demanded that Judge Juan M. Merchan recuse himself.

But there was a problem with his claim: The New York state court system says the account on X, formerly Twitter, is bogus.

Although the handle once belonged to the judge’s daughter Loren, she deleted it about a year ago, a court spokesperson said.

Someone else – it is unclear who – has since taken it over. Its profile picture is now a childhood portrait of Vice-President Kamala Harris.

“The X, formerly Twitter, account being attributed to Judge Merchan’s daughter no longer belongs to her,” said the state’s Office of Court Administration spokesman Al Baker. “It is not linked to her e-mail address, nor has she posted under that screen name since she deleted the account. Rather, it represents the reconstitution, last April, and manipulation of an account she long ago abandoned.”

It is hardly the only online hoax that Trump has promoted over the years, but unleashing apparently false claims concerning the judge’s daughter just weeks before the trial begins represents an escalation on his part.

It came a day after Juan Merchan imposed a gag order on Trump, barring him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and court staff. Notably, the judge and his family are not included in the gag order.

And Trump wasted no time attacking the judge, who is a Democrat, and his family: “If the Biased and Conflicted Judge is allowed to stay on this Sham ‘Case’, it will be another sad example of our Country becoming a Banana Republic,” Trump wrote in the social media post on March 27.

Neither a spokesman for the Trump campaign nor Ms Loren Merchan immediately returned a request for comments on the evening of March 27.

Ms Loren Merchan has worked as an executive at Authentic, a digital marketing agency that works with Democratic candidates.

Trump’s lawyers in 2023 argued that Juan Merchan should recuse himself, claiming that his daughter stood to benefit financially from his decisions.

The judge declined, citing a state advisory committee on judicial ethics, which determined that his impartiality could not “reasonably be questioned”.

The trial, which will begin on April 15, will focus on what prosecutors say was Trump’s effort to cover up a sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office charged Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

On March 24, Juan Merchan seemingly swept away the last obstacles to an April trial, dismissing an attempt by the defence to delay or even dismiss the case.

Trump would be the first former American president to face trial on criminal charges.

Ms Loren Merchan is just the latest woman to feel the sting of Trump’s invective.

In his civil fraud trial in 2023, Trump took aim at the judge’s principal law clerk, claiming falsely that she was Senator Chuck Schumer’s “girlfriend”.

Judge Arthur F. Engoron instituted a limited gag order on Trump, preventing him from commenting on court staff.

Trump twice violated the order, resulting in US$15,000 (S$20,200) in fines. NYTIMES