Trump, the likely Republican nominee for president in the November election, spent hours Tuesday listening to potential jurors offer their opinions of him — some blunt, some guarded, and some just funny.
By the end of the day, seven people had been sworn in as jurors — more than a third of the total number of people that will be needed to hold a trial with a full jury and six alternates.
If New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan can stick to that pace, the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president will be fully underway in less than a week — a potential turning point for Trump’s campaign to return to the White House.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg says Trump orchestrated a scheme before the 2016 election to pay off an adult film actress to keep her quiet about a sexual liaison with him years earlier, and then created a false paper trail to hide the true purpose and source of the payment.
The court will need to find another dozen or so panelists to sit in judgment of Trump, which will mean more chances for potential jurors to opine on the pugilistic politician. Merchan has ordered that the names of the prospective jurors remain confidential, although the prosecutors and defense lawyers are made aware of their names.
“He stirs the pot, he speaks his mind,” said one potential juror, a woman who works at a senior care facility. “You can’t judge him because he speaks his mind.”
Pressed by Trump lawyer Todd Blanche on what she thought of Trump’s outspoken nature, she laughed and said, “Come on, what can you say about that? If I told you all the time what I thought about people — I want to say some things to people but my mama said be nice.”
Blanche questioned the prospective juror as the selection process began focusing more closely on each potential panelist’s views about him. Trump’s defense team is worried about trying to assemble a jury from heavily Democratic Manhattan, where he is unpopular.
Many potential jurors who made it through the initial screening insisted that they could be fair, and some of them openly resisted stating what their political views were, despite being pressed repeatedly by Blanche.
One potential juror questioned Tuesday said he was originally from Mexico but took an oath to become a U.S. citizen in 2017 — the same year Trump was sworn into office. Asked how that might affect his view of the case, the man said it would not.
“Feelings are not facts,” he said. “I’m very grateful to be an American and that happened on the first year that he was president.”
Another prospective juror, a woman with black glasses, became animated discussing how Trump, like any criminal defendant, has a right not to testify if he doesn’t want to.
“If he decides not to speak … that’s your right, you can’t presume that makes him guilty,” she said, waving her hand for emphasis. The prosecutor, she said, is “the one that has to present those facts and prove them, but as I said, he has the right not to say them.”
At the end of her comments, Blanche smiled and said, “I don’t think I could have said it better myself.”
Trump’s legal team seized on social media posts tied to some prospective jurors that the defense lawyers said showed that those people could not be impartial.
One prospective juror had posted, years earlier, “Good news!! Trump lost his court battle on his unlawful travel ban!!!” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said that if the juror had stopped there, there would not be a problem, but the post went on to say: “Get him out, and lock him up.” The judge dismissed that potential juror for cause — one of two jurors the judge decided Tuesday afternoon should not be on the panel.
Another woman in the jury pool was asked about a video she posted to social media after the 2020 election, which showed people in upper Manhattan celebrating the results.
The juror said she happened to see the celebrations while parking her car, and recorded it for posterity, and did not believe it would affect her judgment in the case.
“Regardless of my thoughts about anyone or anything or political feelings or convictions,” she said, “the job of a juror is to understand the facts of a trial and to be the judge of those facts.”
Blanche argued she should be dismissed for cause, calling her Facebook posts “extraordinarily hostile,” but the judge disagreed, saying she had provided what he believed was a reasonable explanation.
The defense challenged a potential juror from the Upper West Side over online posts made or shared by her husband in 2016, including one that had a theme of the comic book heroes the Avengers uniting against Trump.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass argued that Trump’s lawyers were making too much of old social media posts. “People post things on social media … that seem to be funny at the time, and that’s not necessarily as weighty as people think it is,” he said.
The judge agreed. “If this is the worst thing that you’re able to find about this juror,” Merchan said, it gave him more confidence in her ability to be fair and impartial.
One potential juror questioned about her social media posts said they were years old and she had stopped posting about politics.
“It got too vitriolic for me,” she said. “I learned a good lesson.” She said that she had trouble sleeping the night before, thinking about the significance of the case, but insisted she knew she could be fair.
“This is like a big deal in the grander scheme of things,” she said.
One potential juror said she wasn’t particularly interested in politics but added: “Obviously, I know about President Trump. I’m a female.”
When Blanche asked what she meant by that, she answered: “I know that there have been opinions on how he doesn’t treat females correctly, stuff like that. I honestly don’t know the story. So I don’t have a view on it.”
Another potential juror, a woman who works in cybersecurity, answered a question about whether she had close friends who were in the legal profession, by saying she “dated a lawyer for a while. It ended fine.” As some in the courtroom laughed, the woman added, “Sorry, lawyers.”