The task of finding 12 impartial jurors got off to a bumpy start as lawyers on Tuesday Donald Trumpa former president known for his unfiltered use of social media pressed New Yorkers on whether they could judge him fairly.
A prospective juror declared Trump “completely guilty” in an interview outside the courthouse on Monday. A day later, that person, an American history teacher, was dropped from a rapidly reeling pool of more than 500 New Yorkers.
Lawyers dug up old social media posts, asked jurors to explain inconsistent answers and tried to eliminate from the pool candidates they feared could jeopardize their cases.
At one point, the judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchan, warned Trump against trying to intimidate potential jurors.
Trump is defending himself against 34 felony counts of falsifying company records for his alleged role in arranging a hush money payment to a porn star during the 2016 presidential election. He has denied all charges.
While Trump’s lawyers kept a close eye on each juror, Todd Blanche, his lead attorney, took handwritten notes. Some answers brought a smile. Trump mainly looked straight ahead.
By the numbers
The selection process started with 96 jury members in the first batch. By Tuesday, more than half had apologized, saying they couldn’t be fair or impartial. There were still 34 left. From there, 18 were in the jury box, and this was reduced to six. And then six more came in, which were reduced to one.
Seven jurors, including a former waiter, an oncology nurse, a lawyer, an IT consultant, a teacher and a software engineer, were seated at the table in the late afternoon in a trial that lasted two days. Merchan seemed optimistic that a jury of 12 New Yorkers and most likely six alternates could be seated by the end of the week. The trial will resume on Thursday and Friday.
He told the selected jurors to return Monday at 9:30 a.m., indicating that the selection process will likely be over by then.
Where jurors get their news
TikTok. YouTube. One woman, who has been a high school teacher for more than 20 years, said she somehow ended up on an email list for the conservative news outlet The Daily Caller. “I generally don’t read the emails,” she said before getting stuck.
Another juror said he reads The New York Times and the New York Daily News and uses social media. “I Google. I do X,” he said.
Jurors were asked whether they read The New York Times or watched CNN, while the lawyers polled the pool to get a better sense of their knowledge of the charges against Trump in New York and his other lawsuits, and what they thought of them find.
Several jurors claimed they don’t consume much news at all, including one lawyer who explained that his wife is not a fan.
Another, a teacher and native of Harlem, said she doesn’t pay attention to politics or the media. She said she doesn’t have strong opinions, but as a person of color she has friends with strong opinions about Trump. But she did share one, praising him as a person “who speaks his mind.”
“I prefer that to someone who is in office and you don’t know what he or she is thinking,” she said.
When Blanche asked the group if they were familiar with the other charges Trump faced, she appeared to be the only juror who did not raise her hand. She took a seat on the jury.
Another juror claimed to have been away all of February and March and to have lived by a lake without Wi-Fi. “Knowing this was going to happen, I really tried not to hear about this case, and I blocked out the news,” the person said. She was beaten by Trump’s lawyers.
Social media
One juror said she doesn’t tweet and quit Twitter after two days. Another said her Facebook page and political material posted on it were not representative of her views and that she had tried to remove them. One man, a Hell’s Kitchen resident originally from Mexico, said he couldn’t be held responsible for the opinions of his Facebook friends. “Feelings are not facts,” he emphasized.
At one point, Merchan apologized for causing potential offense when he read political memes about Trump, including one about a group of Thai boys trapped in a cave in 2018. Another meme shared by a juror featured juxtaposed photos of Trump. and former President Barack Obama with the caption: “I don’t think this is what they meant when they said orange is the new black.”
It was not clear whether judges had written each message themselves or had others repost it. But the materials prompted Trump’s attorney to repeatedly pressure jurors — including about Facebook posts from Occupy Democrats that one woman claimed she was not responsible for and said she didn’t know how to make. had to remove.
Impartiality tests
The defense scoured the Internet and found comments from potential jurors that showed hostility toward Trump or contradicted what they told the court in questionnaires.
Speculation about seemingly nonpartisan events — such as a post about an election celebration in the city, a Democratic stronghold, in 2020 — became the basis for questions that sought to explore stronger biases that might influence a juror one way or another.
Other commentary was more overt. “Republicans projected to win 70 jail seats,” one potential juror had posted.
That person said she lost sleep Monday night over whether she could fairly judge the case, Blanche said, explaining how the prosecution and defense had “quite a bit of discussion” with her.
But he argued that while the message was dated, it still mattered. “The evidence at trial will be six years old,” he said.
Merchan removed a juror who used the words “lock him up,” words closely associated with Trump, who had uttered a similar chant about Hillary Clinton during his 2016 presidential run.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
