Thursday saw more jurors selected for Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial. Trump faces 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal that could have affected the 2016 election. A dozen jurors and one alternate were in place by the end of the day, but it didn’t happen without another round of courtroom drama.
Two of the seven jurors who had been selected on the first day were sent home, Trump had to be cautioned for misbehavior, Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order was once again front and center, and how the press reports on the case is already having an impact inside the court. After the day’s proceedings ended, media reports that had contributed to earlier problems continued on Thursday evening.
Despite everything, Trump’s trial remains on track. There are only two half-days of court next week, and Tuesday has been set aside to hear issues related to Trump’s possible violations of the gag order. But Merchan is keeping things moving briskly, and it seems likely testimony could get underway when the case resumes in the first week of May.
At the beginning of the day, one of the jurors who had been selected on Tuesday asked to be removed from the case after receiving multiple messages from friends and family who were able to identify her based on the reporting from multiple news outlets that had not only identified her neighborhood, her job, and her place of employment, but also physical descriptions. That included a Fox News report in which host Jesse Watters singled out the woman as someone he was “worried” about and warned that “this nurse scares me if I’m Trump.”
The woman, formerly “Juror No. 2,” said she could no longer be sure that she could deliver a fair and impartial verdict after media reports allowed her to be identified.A second juror was sent home after prosecutors expressed concern that he may have answered questions untruthfully. That included failing to report an arrest for tearing down political ads decades ago. The juror’s wife may also have been part of a corruption investigation that ended with her entering into an agreement with the Manhattan district attorney.
Soon after he arrived in court, Trump took a phone call from his chair at the defense table. Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche hurried over to tell him that he couldn’t use his phone in court. Trump put the phone in his pocket, though he reportedly looked annoyed.
While the morning started by going from seven jurors back to five, for most of the day, the process of selecting additional jurors ran smoothly. In the afternoon, Trump’s defense team ran out of peremptory challenges that kept them from blocking jurors who said less than glowing things about Trump. One of the jurors called him “selfish and self-serving.” Another said she did not like his “persona.” His defense team asked Merchan to remove these jurors for cause, but the judge denied the request. He did remove one woman who had written several social media posts about Trump that the defense described as “strongly worded.”With 12 jurors and one alternate selected, Friday’s session is likely to complete the selection of remaining alternates, assuming there are no more departures. Merchan encouraged the media to show common sense in how they described jurors and respect the process that requires juror anonymity, but that didn’t seem to slow the express at Fox News where Watters again gave detailed descriptions of jurors.
But it wasn’t just the media putting jurors at risk. Prosecutors also accused Trump of violating the gag order seven times on Wednesday evening to threaten both jurors and witnesses. That included linking articles that made negative statements about previous Trump attorney and expected witness Michael Cohen.
Trump’s most serious violation may have been in quoting Watters’ claim that “[t]hey are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury.” That post came out before Juror No. 2 asked to be removed on Thursday and may have contributed to her desire to leave.
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