Behind the scenes, Trump’s legal team has been busy finding and scrutinizing potential jurors’ social media accounts, and has been busy finding and scrutinizing social media accounts critical of the former president and potential Republican presidential nominee. , is rushing to obtain that account and show it to a judge. People were fired.
The time required for such work is demanding. Lawyers in the case have been given a list of names of potential jurors, some of whom they must begin questioning within hours, a person familiar with the work said. Conditions of anonymity for describing internal operations.
People familiar with the defense team’s thinking, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said they fear they will have to overcome long hurdles to win an acquittal from a jury drawn from liberal Manhattan. . On Wednesday, President Trump posted on social media calling the venue “the second worst venue in the country.”
To combat the inherently unfair jury composition, Trump’s legal team has hired a jury consulting firm to analyze all posts from jurors, the person said.
While this is not a particularly new strategy for wealthy defendants who can afford to pay for such work, it is unique in that it has been applied. The case involves Trump, a man millions of Americans have gossiped about, joked about, criticized and admired for years. That means there may be far more social media material available to his lawyers.
But this work of examining potential jurors’ social media posts is being done under enormous time pressure.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Marchan has focused on expediting jury selection, with seven jurors sworn in less than a day and a half after jury selection earlier this week. Ultimately, the process will select 12 jurors and six alternates.
“We had to rush to get all the investigations done, and we will need to rush again” on Thursday, when jury selection resumes, a person familiar with the effort said.
This research is made even more difficult by the fact that so many people live in Manhattan. That means it’s even harder to make sure you’re reviewing posts from the right people, no matter what you call them. Additionally, a person may use multiple social media accounts under nicknames or pseudonyms.
The jurors in this case are partially anonymous, and their names are known to lawyers in the case but will not be made public.
Having demonstrated their tactics in open court, some defense attorneys wonder if some potential jurors will start deleting old online posts before court resumes Thursday. , the person said.
Trump’s press secretary, Stephen Chan, said the charges against the former president were unwarranted and deliberately brought in a jurisdiction most hostile to Trump.
“In a gross abuse of our legal system, the cards are stacked against President Trump. President Trump’s persecutors are using the nation’s most influential Democratic Party to bring bogus lawsuits. They are intentionally targeting some of the jurisdictions,” Chan said.
Trump’s lawyers used old social media posts to counter the person in the front row of the jury box.
Blanche said the woman “continues to make extremely hostile posts on Facebook.”
Mercian seemed perplexed by Blanche’s assessment. Her post in question was a Facebook video of people spontaneously celebrating Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election in the streets, with comments suggesting that she too was happy with the outcome.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass called the claim “ridiculous.”
When asked about the matter in court, the woman explained that when she left home to move her car that day, she witnessed a historic event near her home, and she knew she could still be an impartial juror. He emphasized that
Mr. Marchan can excuse potential jurors if he believes a person is not fair and impartial. Otherwise, if either side objects, they can also attack some jurors from the panel, but each side is only given 10 so-called peremptory challenges.
In the matter of the prospective juror’s old Facebook video, Branch used one of Trump’s challenges to remove her after the judge refused to remove her for cause. This exchange allows the defense to quickly identify who they think is most likely to be selected as a juror from the large pool of candidates called to serve, despite the defense’s claims in court. It became clear that they were working in a hurry to find out.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that past critical or derisive comments about him online are evidence of bias and are grounds for removal. Steinglass argued that in many cases, the posts may be largely unrelated, given their age alone, not to mention that some of the posts brought up in court appear to be Internet humor. He argued that there are some things that look like.
Marchand’s judgment on social media on Tuesday moved closer to prosecutors, but they agreed with the defense that old comments crossed the line.
In that example, a potential juror had written “lock him up” several years ago, referring to then-President Trump.
“Everyone knows that if Mr. Trump is found guilty in this case, he faces a potential prison term of ‘confinement’,” Marchan said. “I don’t think we can retain this juror.”
When Marchand mentioned the possibility of jail time, Trump shook his head slightly in disgust.
So far, the judge has largely been skeptical of the defense’s claims of dangerous bias shown by old social media posts.
Jurors questioned in court about old social media posts often defended and denied that the old posts revealed anything important about their views or impartiality.
“If you look at my social media, you’ll see that very little of what I’m posting right now has anything to do with politics. It’s too much for people, people I’ve known for years. It became bitter,” one woman said. She posted political parodies and humor in 2018, which her defense argued showed she was anti-Trump. She said, “I may have posted this, but I learned a good lesson from it.”
If the judge continues to agree with the defense on most of the jurors’ social media posts, Trump will quickly exhaust his allotted number of challenges and lose his say on the remaining jurors. There is a possibility that it will almost disappear. Trump also has two peremptory challenges per alternate juror.
In court Tuesday, Blanche indicated that he may challenge jury selection in the future based on the discovery of further social media posts related to his client.
Given the pace of jury selection, Marchan said opening statements could be held on Monday, and if that schedule materializes, Trump’s online researchers could influence the composition of the jury. He said there were only a few days left to do so.
Courts are increasingly having to grapple with questionable social media posts that only come to light after juries have been seated or a verdict has been rendered.
The indictment of Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to President Trump, was similar. Mr. Stone learned that the woman who was the jury foreman had posted about her own arrest on social media and posted it again shortly after her conviction, and asked Congress to overturn her conviction for lying. And so.
The bar for a court to overturn a conviction based on juror misconduct was extremely high, and Stone’s bid failed, but he was later pardoned by Trump.
