NEW YORK — A 12-person jury convened Thursday in former President Donald Trump’s secret trial in New York, and the court quickly moved to selecting alternate jurors.
Rapid progress Thursday afternoon brought the case closer to opening statements and weeks of testimony in a case that accuses the former Republican president of falsifying business records to suppress stories about his sex life in the final days of the election. 2016.
The jury includes a sales professional, a software engineer, an English teacher and several lawyers. The case revolves around $130,000 that Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump faces 34 criminal charges. He denies any wrongdoing.
Earlier in the day, two other jurors were dismissed, one of them after expressing doubts about her ability to be fair following the release of details about her identity. Another juror was excused because of concerns that some of his answers in court may have been inaccurate.
In other developments, prosecutors called for Trump to be held in contempt over a series of social media posts this week, and the judge barred reporters from identifying jurors’ employers after they expressed privacy concerns.
The jury selection process gained momentum Tuesday with the selection of seven jurors. But on Thursday, Judge Juan Merchan revealed in court that one of the seven, an oncology nurse, “conveyed that, after sleeping through the night, she was concerned about her ability to be fair and impartial in this case.”
And although the jurors’ names are being kept confidential, the woman told the judge and lawyers she had doubts after saying aspects of her identity had been made public.
“Just yesterday, friends, colleagues and family sent things to my phone about questioning my identity as a juror,” she said. “I do not believe at this time that I can be fair and impartial and let outside influences not affect my decision-making in court.”
A second juror was dismissed after prosecutors raised concerns that he may not have been honest when answering a jury selection question, saying he had never been charged or convicted of a crime.
The IT professional was summoned to court to answer questions after prosecutors said they found an article about a person with the same name who had been arrested in the 1990s for tearing down political signs belonging to the political right in suburban Westchester County. .
A prosecutor also revealed that a relative of the man may have been involved in a deferred prosecution agreement in the 1990s with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting Trump’s case.
Because the juror was questioned Thursday on the judge’s bench, off the microphone and out of reach of reporters, it was unknown whether the man confirmed or denied that any of the instances were linked to him.
Twelve jurors and six alternates must be seated to hear the trial. Merchan said Tuesday that opening statements could begin as early as Monday.
The jury selection process is a critical phase of any criminal trial, but especially so when the defendant is a former president and the presumptive Republican nominee. Potential jurors were questioned about their social media posts, personal lives and political views, while lawyers and the judge looked for biases that would prevent them from being impartial.
Inside the courtroom, there is widespread recognition of the futility of trying to find jurors without knowledge of Trump. A prosecutor said this week that lawyers were not looking for people who had been “living under a rock for the past eight years.”
But Thursday’s events revealed the challenges inherent in selecting a jury for such a high-profile and high-publicity case. More than half of the members of a group of 96 potential jurors brought to the court were dismissed Thursday, most after saying they doubted their ability to be fair and impartial.
After dismissing the nurse who had already been selected from the jury, Merchan ordered journalists in the courtroom not to report potential jurors’ answers to questions about their current and former employers.
“We just lost probably what probably would have been a very good juror for this case, and the first thing she said was that she was scared and intimidated by the press, by all the press and everything that had happened,” Merchan said. after dismissing the juror.
Prosecutors asked that the employers’ questions be removed from the jury questionnaire. Defense attorney Todd Blanche responded that “depriving us of information because of what the press is doing is not the answer.”
The district attorney’s office on Monday sought a $3,000 fine for Trump for three posts on Truth Social that they said violated the order. Since then, prosecutors said he has made seven additional posts that they believe violate the order.
Several of the posts involved an article that referred to Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, as a “serial perjurer,” and one from Wednesday repeated a Fox News host’s claim that liberal activists were lying to get in. on the jury, prosecutor Christopher Conroy said.
Trump lawyer Emil Bove said Cohen “has been attacking President Trump in public statements” and Trump was merely responding.
The judge had already scheduled a hearing for next week on the prosecutor’s request for sanctions for contempt of Trump’s posts.
The test revolves around a payment of US$130,000 that Cohen made shortly before the 2016 election to porn actress Stormy Daniels to prevent her allegations of a sexual encounter with Trump from becoming public in the final days of the race.
Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of the payments in internal records when his company reimbursed Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2018 and is expected to be a key prosecution witness.
Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.
Trump faces 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records. He could face up to four years in prison if he is convicted, although it is unclear whether the judge would opt to put him behind bars. Trump would almost certainly appeal any conviction.
The secret money case is one of four criminal casesinvolving Trump as he vies to reclaim the White House, but it may be the only case to be tried before November’s presidential election.
Appeals and other legal wrangling have caused delays in cases accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results and with illegally accumulate confidential documents.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
