State campaign records show that the New York appeals court judges who will hear former President Donald Trump's appeal donated regularly to Democrat candidates, raising speculation about whether they will be fair in hearing his case. 

The judges were also Democrats when they ran for their lower court judgeships.

It is a violation of judicial ethics rules in the state for judges to donate to political candidates, but they did it anyway. That shows how strongly they felt about politics and elections.

The state's judicial ethics rules state: "Neither a sitting judge nor a candidate for public election to judicial office shall directly or indirectly engage in any political activity" that does not directly involve their own candidacy. The rules prohibit judges from "engaging in any partisan political activity" or "participating in any political campaign."

More bias

14 out of 21 judges made the contributions, and only to Democrats, never Republicans. All except one of them was appointed by a Democrat governor.

Democrats really have Trump over a barrel with this case.

The trial itself was in a location where Trump got only single-digit vote percentages from residents, almost guaranteeing that the jurors would be biased against him.

The judges hearing the appeal are likely to have the same kind of bias.

Appealing to the Supreme Court is really the only way to get any kind of fair hearing of the case, but whether the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case when it is a state case remains to be seen.

Will they or won't they?

On the one hand, the conservatives on the court may be feeling a need to right the obviously biased wrongs done to Trump in the case and address the blatant mistakes that were made.

On the other hand, the court generally tries to stay out of politics and might avoid the case to remain politically neutral.

The appeals court has already ruled several times on appeals of rulings during the trial. While the one justice appointed by a Republican sided with Trump on one ruling, other rulings went against Trump.

Trump previously brought up small donations that Judge Juan Merchan made to President Joe Biden and a group called Stop Republicans, citing them as evidence of bias and saying that Merchan should recuse himself because of the conflict of interest the donations, which totaled $25, represented.

Some of the judges made hundreds and thousands of dollars in donations to Democrats, which goes way beyond even Merchan's conflict of interest.