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Jury selection in Donald Trump’s hush-money business fraud case began Thursday, and the mission to find 12 jurors appeared to have hit a dead end.
Two of the original seven jurors seated Tuesday were excused. Judge Juan Melchan’s hopes of starting the trial with opening arguments on Monday appear to be fading fast.
By the end of the day, the first jury in U.S. history for the criminal trial of a former president had been seated. Only five alternates will be selected on Friday.
It is clear that the trial will be eventful. For example, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said it would not tell the defense who the first witness was to prevent President Trump from posting about it on social media.
A hearing on what prosecutors can say about Trump’s court history is also likely to be held on Friday.
Here are the takeaways from Thursday’s whirlwind jury selection in President Trump’s criminal trial.
Things moved quickly once Mr. Trump’s lawyers and the district attorney’s office exhausted their 10 peremptory strikes to eliminate jurors.
A judge rejected Mr. Trump’s motion to exclude jurors for cause because the jurors had expressed negative opinions about Mr. Trump, asking the former president’s lawyers to He said that it is not enough just to not like the personality of a member.
The seated jury includes seven men and five women. The new jurors appointed Thursday include an investment banker, a security engineer, a retired wealth manager, a speech therapist and a physical therapist.
The number of jurors was reduced to a second panel of 96 Thursday morning after nearly 50 potential jurors said they did not believe it could be fair and impartial, and another nine said they had other disagreements. was rapidly reduced from the association.
03:29 – Source: CNN
Hear what Trump said minutes after jurors were seated in hush money trial
Compared to Tuesday, fewer jurors changed their minds after they started reading the questionnaire in court. Only one of the original 18 jurors was dismissed during Thursday’s proceedings. (The courtroom was dark on Wednesday.)
Perhaps one reason is that the second juror knew as of Tuesday that Trump was the defendant, giving him time to think about serving on the jury. The first panel of 96 jurors, within minutes of entering the courtroom, seeing Trump as the defendant, and listening to the judge explain the case and the role of the jury, knew they believed they were impartial. I had to say whether I thought I could be.
Mr. Trump’s defense team ran out of options to exclude several jurors who had expressed negative views of the former president and his politics.
A woman who will ultimately decide Trump’s fate called him selfish and selfish.
Eleven jurors were seated after Marchand overruled Trump’s objection to jurors for cause. Trump’s lawyers argued that she should be fired because she said she didn’t like Trump’s “persona” of her.
“I don’t like his personality,” she said. “I have some co-workers I don’t like, but I don’t try to interfere with their work.”
“He seems very self-centered and self-centered, so I don’t really appreciate that in any public official. I don’t know him as a person. I mean, his integrity… “I don’t know what he’s like in that respect,” she added. “That’s not my thing.”
Just saying you don’t like Trump’s personality isn’t enough, as Marchan believes he can put it aside to be fair and impartial in denying Trump’s objections. said.
On Thursday afternoon, jurors were generally more open about their opinions of Trump. Many people said they didn’t like his politics or some of his behavior in public, but he felt that if he got past that, he could be a fair and impartial juror.
Another juror said he disagreed with some of Mr. Trump’s politics and said that when he was president, this was a frequent topic of discussion with friends and family. Negative opinions also surfaced.
When Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheres was asked if she felt pressured by others to convict Trump, she answered, “Not at all.” She said she would try not to tell anyone about the incident.
Some jurors followed Trump on social media and read quotes from his book “Art of the Deal.”
He is an investment banker with a master’s degree. He said he follows Michael Cohen on Twitter and has been following Trump since he became president. “Generally, when he made a tweet that was really good for recognition, it was because it was in the news.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers successfully asked Mr. Marchan to remove a woman who was investigated for some strongly worded anti-Trump posts on social media. The defense team used President Trump’s last few forcible attacks to remove the woman who was sleeping in Necheres’ home. Ms Machan denied challenging the cause against the panellist.
Thursday morning highlighted how unpredictable juries can be in high-profile trials, especially in unprecedented cases involving former presidents. Thursday’s court session began with one of the seven jurors whose charges were commuted Tuesday returning to seek removal from the jury.
Juror No. 2, an oncology nurse and native New Yorker, comes to tell us that she has been identified by friends, colleagues, and family as: “Aspects of my identity” are public He said he was concerned that this might happen. Potential jurors.
Machan forgave her without protest. The judge then directed the media not to mention any physical appearance that could identify the jurors. He was particularly displeased by reports that one of the jurors selected had an Irish accent.
“We just lost” who should have been the appropriate juror in the case, Marchan said.
He also instructed the media not to report on two questions on the questionnaire asked of all prospective jurors: current employer and former employer.
A second seated juror was later excused after prosecutors informed the court that during their investigation they had discovered information indicating that the juror had been arrested on charges of tearing up political ads in the 1990s.
At the end of the day, Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche asked the district attorney’s office to share the first three witnesses it planned to call, with opening arguments and first witness testimony potentially starting as early as Monday. He pointed out that there is.
The district attorney’s office refused. Assistant District Attorney Josh Steinglass acknowledged that civility is often extended. However, President Trump shrugged, saying, “I haven’t told them who the witnesses are,” since he has posted about them on social media.
Machan said he couldn’t blame prosecutors for that. Trump clearly shook his head over the exchange.
Blanche then offered to assure the District Attorney’s Office that President Trump would not post about the witnesses if they shared the witness list.
“I don’t think you can put it that way,” Machan replied.
Blanche continued to protest, but Marchand said he would not order the witnesses to be handed over. “They don’t have to do that,” he said.
The district attorney’s office’s tactics mean that not only will Mr. Trump’s team be secretive about future witnesses, but prosecutors may also choose to withhold their identities from the public, meaning that witnesses may On a daily basis, meaning it could be a surprise.
As of Friday, 22 potential jurors had yet to go through the questionnaire process from the second committee. Marchand will begin working with them to fill in five additional alternate jurors, but the judge said that number could change.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers and the district attorney’s office will also face additional peremptory challenges to alternate jurors. Neither used a challenge against the first alternate selected Thursday.
Marchand said that if jury selection ends early enough on Friday, he would hold what is known as a Sandoval hearing on Friday afternoon and would use any of Trump’s legal history if he chooses to testify. He said he plans to discuss whether he can be impeached.
Prosecutors say in their filing that they will ask about recent judgments against the former president, including the recent civil fraud trial and the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.
But if enough alternates cannot be chosen from the 22, Mr Marchand was told to form an additional panel of 96 jurors, be sworn in on Thursday and return on Friday. This will likely be the last pool of talent to form a jury. Juror in Trump hush money trial.
It was noticeably cold in the downtown Manhattan courtroom Thursday. President Trump commented on it to reporters on his way out, and his lawyer even asked if he could turn up the temperature. Marchan noted that Thursday’s presentation by prospective jurors in the case probably raised the temperature in the courtroom in more ways than one.
“I’d like to apologize because it’s cold here,” Machan said. “We’re trying to do everything we can to control temperatures, but that’s extreme.”
