By Michael R. Sisak and Jennifer Peltz

NEW YORK — Donald Trump has lost his latest bid for a new judge in his New York criminal case as it heads toward a final verdict and a potential sentencing next month.

In a decision published Wednesday, Judge Juan M. Merchan refused to step aside, saying Trump’s claim was a reiteration “filled with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims” about his ability to remain impartial.

It is the third time Merchan has rejected such a request from lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee. They argue the judge has a conflict of interest because his daughter works as a political consultant for prominent Democrats, including Kamala Harris as she sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Harris is now the party’s nominee against Trump.

The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, met Harris occasionally in 2019 but “never developed an individual relationship” with her, the consulting firm’s founder Mike Nellis told US House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in a letter Tuesday. The company, Authentic Campaigns Inc., has not worked for the Harris campaign, President Joe Biden’s now-ended re-election bid or the Democratic National Committee in the 2024 election cycle, Nellis said.

A state court ethics panel said last year that Merchan could continue as a judge in Trump’s case. The panel wrote that a relative’s independent political activities are not “a reasonable basis for questioning the judge’s impartiality.”

Merchan, a state judge in Manhattan, admitted last year that he made several small donations to Democratic causes during the 2020 campaign, including $15 to Biden. But Merchan has repeatedly said he is confident he can handle Trump’s case fairly and impartially. In his ruling, Merchan wrote that he will continue to base decisions “on the evidence and the law, without fear or favor, discarding undue influence.”

“With these basic principles in mind, this court now reiterates for the third time what should already be clear — innuendo and inaccuracy do not create a conflict,” Merchan wrote in his three-page decision. “Therefore, recall is not necessary, much less required.”

But with Harris now Trump’s adversary, Trump attorney Todd Blanche argued in a letter to the judge last month that the defense’s concerns have become “even more concrete.”

Prosecutors called the claims “an annoying and frivolous attempt to renegotiate” the issue.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung, citing Merchan’s donation to Biden and Loren Merchan’s consulting work, criticized him as a “very conflicted judge” who “should have recused himself from this case a long time ago.”

Merchan “has been shown to be biased against President Trump and devoted not only to the partisan political interests of Democrats, but also to the apparent financial interests of an immediate family member,” Cheung said.

Trump accused Merchan on his Truth Social platform of continuing to hold him under a partial gag order — an issue that was not part of the denial decision. Earlier this month, a state appeals court upheld the gag order, which bars Trump from making public comments about the prosecution team, court employees or their families, including Merchan’s daughter.

The Manhattan district attorney, who prosecuted the case, declined to comment.

Trump was convicted in May of falsifying his company’s records to conceal a 2016 agreement to pay adult film actor Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about her alleged sexual encounter with him in 2006. Prosecutors made the payment as part of a Trump-driven effort to prevent voters from hearing sordid stories about him during his first campaign.

Trump says all the stories were false, that the business records were not, and that the case was a political maneuver meant to hurt his current campaign. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a Democrat. Trump has promised to appeal, but that cannot happen until he is convicted.

Meanwhile, his lawyers have taken other steps to try to derail the case. In addition to the motion to dismiss, they have asked Merchan to vacate the judgment and dismiss the case because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s immunity ruling in July.

That decision bars prosecution of former presidents for official acts and limits prosecutors from pointing to official documents as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal. Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the verdict, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the Daniels affair.

Merchan has said he will rule on the immunity claim on Sept. 16 and set Sept. 18 for “sentencing or other proceedings as appropriate.”

Jordan, the speaker of the House of Representatives, sent a letter to Loren Merchan on Aug. 1 demanding that she turn over all documents related to the Harris and Biden campaigns, any discussions she or her company may have had about Trump’s quiet prosecution for money and any conversations she may have had with her father about the case.

Jordan suggested that since some authentic clients have mentioned Trump’s case in fundraising applications, there was at least “a perception” that Loren Merchan and company could profit from it. But Nellis, the company’s founder, said it does not receive a percentage of any money its clients raise and that “neither Authentic nor Ms. Merchan profit financially from any verdicts in Donald Trump’s criminal or civil lawsuits.”

The judge’s daughter, who became a partner in the firm after 2019, has had only “minimal input or contact with any political clients” this cycle and was not aware of any client communications that mentioned Trump’s trial, Nellis added.