Jury selection in Donald Trump’s hush money case encountered new setbacks on Thursday, as a previously seated juror was excused after backtracking on whether she felt she could be impartial and fair. The status of a second sworn-in juror was also called into question after he failed to report to court to address the accuracy of some of his previous answers to questions.
Seven jurors were sworn in on Tuesday, but with the excusal of at least one of those people, lawyers now need to pick 12 others to serve on the panel that will decide the first-ever criminal case against a former US president.
Prosecutors on Thursday also asked Judge Juan M. Merchan to sanction Trump over seven more social media posts they say violate a gag order that bars Trump from attacking witnesses. They had asked on Monday that Trump be held in contempt and fined over three other posts.
A second group of 96 prospective jurors were brought into court midmorning to begin the questioning phase of jury selection.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged scheme to bury stories he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign.
The allegations focus on payoffs to two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump years earlier, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged Trump had out of wedlock. Trump says none of these supposed sexual encounters occurred.
The case is the first of Trump’s four indictments to reach trial.
The status of a second juror was in limbo Thursday after he failed to report to court to address concerns that some of his answers in court may not have been accurate.
Prosecutors found an article from the 1990s about a man with the same name as the juror being arrested for tearing down political advertisements in suburban Westchester County. The posters were on the political right, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said.
Steinglass also disclosed that a relative of the man may have been involved in a nonprosecution agreement in the 1990s with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting Trump’s case.
Judge Juan M. Merchan had instructed the man to come to court at 9:15am on Thursday to answer questions and verify if the people involved were him or his relative.
Merchan noted the juror’s apparent “reluctance to come in” and asked both sides if they’d consent to having him removed without further inquiry. Trump lawyer Todd Blanche declined, saying he wanted to first hear what the man had to say.
Under questioning earlier this week, the man had said he hadn’t been convicted of a crime.
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Prosecutors in the trial told Judge Juan M. Merchan on Thursday that they wanted the former president held in contempt and sanctioned for seven more posts they said violated his gag order.
Trump’s new posts came after the prosecutors initially sought a US$3,000 fine on Monday for three other Truth Social posts.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy said several of the new posts involved an article that referred to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen as a “serial perjurer” and another from Wednesday that repeated a claim by a Fox News host that liberal activists were lying to get on the jury.
Trump lawyer Emil Bove said Cohen “has been attacking President Trump in public statements,” and that Trump was just replying.
Merchan had already scheduled a hearing for next week on the prosecution’s request for contempt sanctions over Trump’s posts.
After dismissing a seated juror in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, Judge Merchan admonished the media for reporting details about the seated and potential jurors that could be used to identify them, ordering them not to report prospective jurors’ answers to questions about their current and former employers.
How Trump will seek to turn his hush money trial into political gold
How Trump will seek to turn his hush money trial into political gold
“As evidenced by what’s happened already, it’s become a problem,” he said on Thursday morning.
He also directed reporters to “abide by common sense” and avoid writing about the physical characteristics of the people called to serve.
“We just lost what probably would have been a very good juror,” the judge continued. “She said she was afraid and intimidated by the press, all the press.”
A juror who had been selected for the trial was dismissed on Thursday after she told the court she’d become concerned about her ability to be impartial.
Although the jurors’ names are being kept confidential, the woman, a nurse, “conveyed that after sleeping on it overnight she had concerns about her ability to be fair and impartial in this case,” Merchan said before calling her into the room for questioning.
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Trump gained over US$100 million through fraud, New York says as civil trial starts
Trump gained over US$100 million through fraud, New York says as civil trial starts
The woman said her family members and friends were questioning her about being a juror.
With the woman’s dismissal, the total number of seated jurors dropped to six. Lawyers now need to pick 12 more people to serve on the panel that will decide the former president’s criminal case.
Merchan admonished the media for reporting details about the jurors that could be used to identify them.
“There’s a reason that this is an anonymous jury,” Merchan said. “It kind of defeats the purpose of that when so much information is put out there that it is very easy for anyone to identify who the jurors are.”
“The press is certainly entitled to write about anything that’s said on the record because it’s on the record,” Merchan said, but he added that he’s directing reporters to “abide by common sense” and not do things like writing about physical characteristics of the people called to serve.
Donald Trump sat at the defence table in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday morning, talking on a mobile phone for about 30 seconds before his lawyers came over and put it away.
Trump looked sternly ahead while being photographed, a stark contrast from a moment earlier when he was casually chatting with lawyer Todd Blanche before the photographers arrived.
While the trial cannot be televised, the judge is allowing a handful of still photographers to shoot photos of Trump before each day’s proceedings start.
Harvey Weinstein was famously admonished for playing with his phone by a different judge during his trial in the same courtroom four years ago.
Trump’s mobile phone usage happened while court was not in session and before the judge had taken the bench.
Generally, mobile phone usage – and certainly making or taking calls – is prohibited in New York courtrooms.
The jury selection process has moved swifter than expected, prompting Trump when departing the courthouse on Tuesday to complain to reporters that the judge, was “rushing” the trial.
Trump hush money trial: 8 million New Yorkers, but only 12 will judge him
Trump hush money trial: 8 million New Yorkers, but only 12 will judge him
Merchan has suggested that opening statements could start on Monday.
The seating of the Manhattan jury in Donald Trump’s hush money trial will be a seminal moment in the case, setting the stage for a trial that will place the former president’s legal jeopardy at the heart of the campaign against Democrat Joe Biden and feature potentially unflattering testimony about Trump’s private life in the years before he became president.
The process of picking a jury is a critical phase of any criminal trial, but especially so when the defendant is a former US commander-in-chief and the presumptive Republican nominee for this year’s presidential election.
Inside the court, there’s broad acknowledgement of the futility in trying to find jurors without knowledge of Trump, with a prosecutor this week saying that lawyers were not looking for people who had been “living under a rock for the past eight years.”
