The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago has spent the past year investigating a Democratic fund-raising firm once co-owned by the daughter of the judge in President Trump’s hush-money trial in New York, according to court filings and people familiar with the inquiry.
Last August, the U.S. attorney, Andrew S. Boutros of the Northern District of Illinois, directed Authentic Campaigns Inc. to turn over a broad range of internal communications with clients. They included former Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and the Democratic National Committee, according to a grand jury subpoena reviewed by The New York Times.
Loren Merchan, the daughter of Juan Merchan, a supreme court judge in Manhattan, was the firm’s vice president until late 2024 and was also on the list. The Merchan family has been a frequent target of Mr. Trump and his allies, who have made unsubstantiated claims that the judge was out to get him and that his daughter profited from accusations aired at the trial.
The trial ended with Mr. Trump’s conviction in 2024, in the midst of his campaign for a second term, on 34 felony counts stemming from his efforts to keep a porn star from publicizing her story of a liaison with him.
The firm’s legal team, which included Preet Bharara, the former top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, sought to limit the request. Prosecutors eventually modified the subpoena, narrowing it to focus on a $468 payment from Ms. Harris’s presidential campaign, and emails between Ms. Merchan and her father, according to people with knowledge of the inquiry who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing legal matter.
It is not clear where the investigation stands. No follow-up subpoenas have been issued to individuals, including Ms. Merchan or Mr. Nellis, suggesting that prosecutors might not be actively working to charge anyone, those people added.
The inquiry is the latest indication of the extent to which U.S. attorneys offices across the country, once largely removed from political machinations in Washington, have increasingly been drawn into the Mr. Trump’s effort to target his adversaries.
In this case, prosecutors sought the subpoena that came from a criminal referral from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. The panel made the referral after Mike Nellis, the founder of Authentic Campaigns, refused to provide the committee with confidential emails it was seeking, including those between Ms. Merchan and her father.
“The Trump administration’s targeting of my company is an outrageous abuse of power,” Mr. Nellis said when asked about the investigation. “It is a ridiculous fishing expedition based on conspiracy theories that are completely divorced from reality.”
He accused the department of seeking to seize the “sensitive political communications of my clients who are among Trump’s most prominent political adversaries.”
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment, as did Judge Merchan and Loren Merchan.
The language in the subpoena is virtually identical to claims made by the House committee that Mr. Trump’s conviction in the hush money trial presided over by Judge Merchan was “potentially politically motivated.” The criminal referral also included the contention that “Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation and prosecution of President Donald J. Trump” might have been improper.
The subpoena did not specify what potential crimes might have been committed in the prosecution of Mr. Trump.
In addition to initially requesting information from the Harris and Biden presidential campaigns, Mr. Boutros sought material from Ms. Merchan, Mr. Bragg and one of his deputies, Matthew Colangelo; Mr. Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House; Ms. Hochul; Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California; Representative Daniel Goldman, Democrat of New York; Representative Lauren Underwood, Democrat of Illinois; and the Democratic Party’s House and Senate fund-raising arms as well as the Democratic National Committee.
The career prosecutors who secured the subpoena, Matthew Skiba and William Hogan, both played roles in an ill-fated case against six protesters accused of assaulting federal agents during the White House-directed immigration crackdown in 2025 known as Midway Blitz.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago had to withdraw the charges in that case after defense lawyers raised concerns about the conduct of Mr. Boutros’s prosecutors before a grand jury. That prompted Mr. Boutros, who worked as a prosecutor in the office he now runs, to announce a review of internal procedures.
Mr. Trump saw his hush money trial in New York, which resulted in him becoming the first former president to be convicted on felony charges, as the culmination of a yearslong effort by Democrats to destroy him. He was fighting those charges at the same time that he was defending himself against two separate federal indictments and in an election interference case in Georgia.
Mr. Trump’s public pretrial attacks prompted Judge Merchan to impose a gag order to prevent him from intimidating jurors, prosecutors, witnesses and court staff. Mr. Trump’s lead defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, now the attorney general, argued to rescind the order but was unsuccessful.
By the time the trial started Judge Merchan himself emerged as a main target of the defense, with the president and his allies claiming that Ms. Merchan’s longtime involvement in Democratic politics was proof that the fix was in.
“Judge Juan Merchan is totally compromised, and should be removed from this TRUMP Non-Case immediately. His Daughter, Loren, is a Rabid Trump Hater, who has admitted to having conversations with her father about me, and yet he gagged me,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in March 2024.
The judge did not recuse himself. An ethics complaint filed by Trump allies had no effect on the trial. Mr. Trump’s election to a second term led Judge Merchan to discharge the case without any sentence or penalty.
But Republicans, spurred on by Trump-allied influencers like Laura Loomer, have continued to make the case that the judge, his daughter and other operatives were guilty of wrongdoing.
The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan of Ohio, subsequently began demanding documents from the firm. He cited a theory floated by Trump supporters: that Mr. Nellis and Ms. Merchan improperly used Mr. Trump’s prosecution in digital fund-raising pitches on behalf of Democrats. (Mr. Trump aggressively used the criminal indictments against him to raise millions during the campaign.)
“Experts have raised substantial concerns with Judge Merchan, your father, refusing to recuse himself from President Trump’s case despite your work on behalf of President Trump’s political adversaries and the financial benefit that your firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc., could receive from the prosecution and conviction,” Mr. Jordan wrote to Ms. Merchan in August 2024, requesting her correspondence with the judge.
Lawyers for the firm repeatedly argued that Ms. Merchan had no influence over her father’s work decisions and no contact with many of the campaigns the firm did business with.
They accused Mr. Jordan of engaging in a politically motivated “inquisition,” and claimed Ms. Merchan and Mr. Nellis had faced so many death threats from Trump supporters that they needed to hire security.
They refused to hand over most of the documents Mr. Jordan wanted most, calling the request “as baseless as it is dangerous” in a September 2024 letter to Mr. Jordan from Marc Elias, a prominent election lawyer who represented Mr. Nellis.
