Jury selection stalls and threatens to drag out Donald Trump’s first criminal trial

Donald Trump’s criminal trial in the Stormy Daniels case (the payment of a bribe to a porn actress to buy her silence about an extramarital affair) continued on Tuesday in the same way it proceeded the day before: stuck in jury selection. The defendant, who is now the first former U.S. president to face a criminal trial, spent the seven hours of the hearing looking at information on the monitor on his desk, taking the occasional nap, as on Monday, and scrutinizing each and every one of the potential jurors. Of the 96 summoned on the first day, 50 excluded themselves because they did not think that they could judge Trump impartially.

The fact that Trump is the most polarizing figure in the United States, and that his presence in the room is also an intimidating factor, was clear from the parade of potential jurors who were pierced by the gaze of the Republican from the moment they entered to the moment they left the room after being dismissed. One 30-something came out lamenting, “I just couldn’t do it.” Another explained that she had signed up for a list of anti-Trump activists months ago, and, as a result, was dismissed. An accountant recounted that her company had a Republican majority, and that some bias may have rubbed off on her. “I can try. But I’m not 100% sure I can be fair,” the middle-aged woman said before she was dismissed.

Of the fifty or so potential jurors who were rejected or dismissed on Monday, over half were white women; that same trend continued on Tuesday. Judge Juan Merchan had already warned on the first day that if jury selection stalls, and the trial has delays, there will also be sessions on Wednesdays, the only day off scheduled, so that he can hear his cases in the mental health court (a section of the court that only serves convicts with mental problems).

The remaining candidates (32 on Monday; 18 on Tuesday) were required to respond under oath to the 42 questions of the suitability questionnaire, while Trump followed the prosecutors’ and defense lawyers’ questioning with the form in his right hand, never taking his eye off the anonymous citizens. It is a process called voir dire, sifting through hundreds of candidates to find the 12 jurors, plus six alternates. But the string of dismissals underscores how difficult it will be to find a jury when the accused is a former president who arouses mixed feelings.

“He has the intimidating effect of a guy who projects greatness and strength whenever he can,” observed New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, author of a book about the Republican, Confidence Man, who sits a few feet away from him in the courtroom. A scrutinizing gaze, often trying to make eye contact, is the first barrier to be overcome by the hundreds of Manhattan residents who have been summoned for jury duty. The second is their possible biases.

Political rallies in the hallways

In the dingy Lower Manhattan courtroom, Trump appears somewhere between combative, sleepy, committed to the process and sarcastic. He asked for permission to attend the graduation of his youngest son, Barron, and the upcoming Supreme Court hearing that will decide on his immunity in another criminal case, one of the four he faces in total: election interference in 2020, in Washington. The judge denied his requests.

In the corridors during breaks and at the building’s entrance and exit, Trump takes the opportunity to give free rein to his disjointed verbiage in a tone somewhere between aggrieved and certain of success: “This is a trial that should have never been brought. Every legal pundit and every legal scholar said this trial is a disgrace. We have a Trump-hating judge,” he declared this morning. “We have a judge who shouldn’t be on this case. I was paying a lawyer and marked it down as a legal expense account… That’s exactly what it was — and you get indicted over that? I should be right now in Pennsylvania and Florida, in many other states, North Carolina, Georgia, campaigning. This is all coming from the Biden White House because the guy can’t put two sentences together. He can’t campaign. He’s using this in order to try and win an election. And it’s not working that way… So check it out. Legal expense, it’s called legal expense. That’s what you’re supposed to call it,” he mumbled with his usual syncopated syntax (subordinate clauses are not part of his linguistic capital). But it was precisely the recording of the alleged bribe (to prevent the affair with Daniels from coming to light and hurting him in the final stretch of the 2016 campaign) as a “legal expense” that triggered the investigation that has resulted in the trial for possible electoral interference.

Among the 18 people questioned Tuesday, a young African American professional woman answered question 34 on the form (whether she had a formed opinion about Trump) by talking about the 2020 election. “There was a division in the country, and I can’t ignore that,” she said. “However, I will never attribute it to any one individual.” The questions posed to the potential jurors covered all kinds of information: their profession, where they live, marital status, whether or not they have a pet (most do), children (very few do), their hobbies and, most tellingly, their news sources: the overwhelming majority are informed via social media, notably TikTok (a young woman explained that she didn’t like newspapers, and she was not the only one). On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers tried, with relative success, to reject some potential jurors for “hostile” posts on social media.

Not a few potential jurors claimed to follow the news through media that are echo chambers, such as the liberal MSNBC and the conservative Fox. One candidate drew laughs from the audience by claiming that as a high schooler he was hooked on The Apprentice, Trump’s reality show that was the springboard for his political career. He added that during Trump’s presidency, he agreed with some things and disagreed with others. Another, finally, claimed he found being there “fascinating and mysterious.” Some claimed not to know that Trump is accused of other criminal cases: the limited, if not scarce, information of numerous candidates is another noteworthy factor.

On Monday Merchan excused a middle-aged man whose son is getting married in June in Seattle because he couldn’t guarantee that the trial would be over by the date of the wedding. “I think we should be done by then, but I can’t promise. If you’re with us, you’re with us ‘til the end,” the judge told him and congratulated him on the upcoming nuptials. The trial is expected to last between six and eight weeks, but, if it continues at this rate, it could last until the summer, while the rest of the cases hang in the balance.

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