- Written by Madeline Halpert & Kayla Epstein
- BBC News in court
All 12 jurors have been sworn in in former US President Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial in New York City.
“We have a jury,” Judge Juan Melchan declared after seven men and five women were selected for the jury. Two jurors should have been excused sooner.
Some expected jury selection to take weeks, but events moved quickly after Trump’s team exhausted its objections.
The court could hear opening arguments as early as Monday.
The trial, the first in history to involve a former U.S. president, stems from hush money payments to a porn star.
Stormy Daniels was given $130,000 (£105,000) before the 2016 election to buy her silence about her affair with Trump, which he denies. .
Although the payments themselves were not illegal, Trump was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D). He pleaded not guilty.
During his court appearance Thursday night, Trump displayed dozens of print media articles criticizing the charges as “political.”
“This is very unfair and very bad,” said the Republican, who is running against Democratic President Joe Biden in the November election.
“The whole world is paying attention to this hoax.” He also took issue with the temperature inside the courtroom, saying, “It’s freezing inside.”
Today’s jury selection meeting initially faced an impasse after Judge Marchand removed two members who had been seated this week.
The judge announced that Juror #2 realized he could no longer be impartial after his friends and family gathered media reports that he had been selected to serve on the jury. They started bombarding her with messages, she said.
“I don’t believe I’m fair and impartial at this point,” she said, because it can be difficult to keep outside opinions from influencing one’s decisions in court.
Judge Marchan quickly pardoned her and then restricted the information reporters could use to describe the jurors, making it difficult to identify them.
“We just lost someone who probably would have been a very good juror for this case,” he said.
She wasn’t the only one fired.
Judge Machan said that attorneys from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office conducted an investigation and discovered that Juror No. 4 may have been lying about having no criminal history.
The judge said he appears to have been arrested on charges of ripping up political ads in the 1990s, and that his wife may have been involved in a corruption case being investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
After lengthy private discussions between the defense team and Judge Marchan, the juror was excused.
Jeremy Saland, a former Manhattan district attorney who now works in criminal defense, told the BBC that it was “very unusual” for a jury to be dismissed within 48 hours of being seated.
Anna Kominsky, a professor at New York Law School, said today’s developments show this is no typical criminal case, and the public pressure on those involved will be unprecedented.
“The real problem here is that the identities of jurors and prospective jurors are not preserved for the parties,” she said. “It’s hiding it from the public. That’s the difference.”
The search for an impartial and motivated jury continued throughout the afternoon. Ninety-six new potential jurors were brought into the courtroom.
By the end of the day, seven of them will be sworn in as jurors in front of a judge. Additional jurors will be sworn in as alternates, and the process to find five more potential jurors will continue Friday.
image source, Getty Images
It took a lot of sorting to get there.
As he had done in the early stages of jury selection, Judge Marchan first dismissed dozens of jurors outright, saying they could not fairly try Trump.
One potential juror, who was born and raised in Italy, was excused after he said he associated Trump with former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Mr. Trump stood by with folded arms as his defense team probed the committee about whether he harbored strong feelings toward him.
“I don’t agree with most of his policies,” one said.
“I don’t like his personality,” said another prospective juror.
A third Brooklyn native also admitted that he “has an opinion” about Trump.
“I’ve known Donald Trump all my life,” she said, adding that she had seen him and ex-wife Marla Maples shopping for baby products.
But most people, including those with a “neutral view” of the former president, argued that their opinion of him as a politician did not sway his evaluation in court.
The defense team expressed concern about an old social media post in which one potential juror called President Trump a “racist, sexist and narcissist.”
Judge Machan forced her to read the post out in court. When she came across the word racist, she said, “Oh, that’s bad.”
“I was in a confused state of mind during that campaign,” she said. “I’m not in that position today.”
Ultimately, Judge Marchand was dismissed, saying it was not worth “taking a chance” with the jury.
Another juror was excused after a surprising personal connection to the case was revealed.
One woman said she met Susan Necheres, one of Trump’s lawyers, 15 years ago.
“She stayed at my house overnight,” Necheres told the court.
During cross-examination, the prospective juror admitted that she had stayed there once.
