A company run by the daughter of the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s current New York case works for left-wing legal groups behind efforts to keep President Trump of the 2024 ballot and Chinese Communist Party-funded influence groups.
These revelatory business affiliation of Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter Loren Merchan, president and partner of Authentic Campaigns, follow previous reporting on the firm’s work for Democratic politicians including President Joe Biden and Rep. Adam Schiff.
Among the newly revealed clients of Judge Merchan’s daughter are the Brennan Center, which has filed lawsuits against the Trump administration and campaign over a dozen times, and the Asia Society.
ELECTION INTERFERENCE.
The website of Merchan’s Authentic Campaigns highlights the Brennan Center for Justice as one of its clients. A recipient of considerable cash from George Soros over the years, the Brennan Center played a critical role in the recent attempt to remove President Trump from the Colorado ballot ahead of the 2024 election.
The group filed an amicus brief advising the Supreme Court to reject President Trump’s efforts to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove him from the ballot due to claims he incited an insurrection on January 6th.
”The brief urges the Court to reject Trump’s attempts to revive the independent state legislature theory on appeal,” summarized the Brennan Center.
Authentic Campaigns appears to have worked for Brennan Center since at least 2023, with the group still listed as an active client. In addition to expanding the group’s online presence and following, Authentic Campaigns also helped "seamlessly transition these engaged readers into grassroots donors, thereby augmenting the organization’s funding and capacity to drive change.”
"Authentic embarked on a meticulously crafted journey to not only identify and acquire new subscribers but also to galvanize them into becoming active, contributing donors to the Brennan Center’s mission. We honed in on target audiences with a demonstrated affinity for progressive and pro-democracy causes as well as social justice nonprofit engagement, ensuring that our outreach was as resonant as it was expansive,” summarized the company of its robust efforts.
Authentic Campaign’s work for the Brennan Center appears to have been centered on elections, with sample ads and campaigns on the firm’s website focusing on themes such as how to "protect election officials” and hammering how "they couldn’t take our Capitol. Now they’re coming for our democracy.”
The left-wing non profit has also initiated at least 14 lawsuits against then-President Trump and Cabinet members for a variety of immigration and census-related topics. More recently, the Brennan Center also intervened in defense of Democrat election officials such as the Pennsylvania Secretary of State during the 2020 election following lawsuits from the Trump campaign.
THE CHINA CONNECTION.
The Asia Society is another client of Authentic Campaigns.
The group is a pro-China lobby group that sponsors several Chinese
Communist Party-funded Confucius Institutes across the United States. These controversial institutes are propaganda centers – notoriously rife with espionage activity – that operated extensively on college campuses until President Trump cracked down on their presence in American schools. What’s more, Confucius Institutes have a counterpart called "Confucius Classrooms,” which focus on spreading their pro-communism and pro-China message to students in elementary through high school.
The Asia Society, which frequently collaborates with other Chinese Communist Party-backed influence groups, counts members of the Chinese Communist Party and high-ranking officials at Chinese universities with track records of cyber-espionage and intellectual property theft such as East China Normal University, Renmin University, and Wuhan University on its board.
The Confucius Institute even honored two of Asia Society’s Confucius Schools during its 2015 Confucius Institute World Conference in Shanghai with the Hanban Confucius Classrooms of the Year award.
Despite these ties, Authentic has worked for the group since at least 2023, noting on their website how they helped The Asia Society’s propaganda reach a larger audience:
"Authentic devised a dual-focused approach to effectively tackle Asia Society’s objectives. We combined targeted digital advertising campaigns with strategic list acquisition initiatives to maximize reach and engagement. A comprehensive understanding of Asia Society’s diverse offerings enabled us to tailor each campaign to resonate with specific audience segments, thereby ensuring maximum relevance and impact.”