Jury selection is set to resume in the former president’s case Donald Trump‘s hush money trial in New York after a break on Wednesday.
With 7 jurors of 96 already selected, Thursday’s schedule will largely focus on questioning potential jurors in a second group of the same size to see if they can be fair and impartial when it comes to Trump. The judge said he hoped to have 12 jurors, as well as alternates, selected by the end of Friday.
Trump’s prosecutors and defense attorneys will have fewer opportunities to dismiss potential jurors, as both have used six out of 10. forced calls Tuesday.
While either side can issue an unlimited number of challenges for cause, it is up to the judge to grant those challenges and strike those jurors. State Judge Juan Mercan on Tuesday dismissed two jurors, one of whom posted a “shut her up” Facebook message about Trump, but he rejected some other subpoenas.
Trump he moaned The number of problems he can do on Wednesday.
“When we were selecting the jury, I thought TRIKES was supposed to be ‘unrestricted’?” Then I was told we only had 10 people, not nearly enough when we were deliberately given the 2nd Worst Place in the Country,” he wrote on social media platform Truth Social, before blasting the case as “election meddling”.
Under New York law, defendants charged with low-level crimes like Trump’s are only entitled to 10 strikes.
A planned day off on Tuesday followed some fireworks Merchan in a Manhattan courtroom where he condemned Trump for speaking to one of the potential jurors being questioned about Joe Biden’s Facebook post celebrating his victory over Trump in the 2020 election.
“I’m not going to stand for that. I’m not going to have any jurors in this courtroom to intimidate me. I want to make that clear,” Merchan said.
Finally, seven judges sworn in on Tuesday: two lawyers, a teacher, an oncology nurse, an IT consultant, a teacher and a software engineer.
The jury foreman—who usually leads and directs the jury and acts as its spokesman—is a married man who lives in West Harlem and works in sales. He told Merchan that he reads The New York Times and watches Fox News and MSNBC.
The names of the jurors have not been released because Merchan decided to use them, citing security concerns anonymous jury.
Trump faces and pleads guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records not guilty. If found guilty, he faces up to 4 years in prison.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office alleges that Trump falsified business records to hide payments he made to his former lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse him for a $130,000 payment to elderly film actor Stormy Daniels near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels claimed that she had sex with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied sleeping with Daniels, but he has admitted paying Cohen.
The DA’s office also alleges that American Media Inc. paid model and actor Karen McDougal, who appeared in Playboy magazine and claimed to have had a nine-month affair with Trump before he was elected president, “$150,000 in exchange for her disagreement with him. talk about alleged sex.”
Trump also denied having sex with McDougal.