MOST AMERICANS THINK TRUMP INNOCENT – BUT HUSH MONEY TRIAL COULD RUIN HIM
Unless you’ve been on Mars for the past ten years, the chances are you’ll have a strong opinion on Donald Trump.
Among Americans, feelings on the polarising former president veer towards either adoration or loathing. Thus finding 12 good men (and/or women), with sufficiently open minds on the subject of Trump’s guilt or innocence in the hush payments case, is a Herculean task.
Trump was back in a New York courtroom on Tuesday as a judge battled to assemble a jury, telling reporters before he entered that it was unfairly keeping him from the campaign trail. “This is a trial that should never have been brought,” he said.
More than 500 Manhattan residents have turned up to a courthouse, surrounded by noisy rallies and heightened security, to see if they are sufficiently impartial to judge the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for allegedly disguising payments issued to porn star Stormy Daniels. He denies all the charges.
Potential jurors have to answer a 42-question form about their backgrounds and opinions, and hang around for hours, in the tortuous process of finding 12 people and 6 substitutes that both prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers can agree on.
When the selection process got underway on Monday, prospective jurors filed past Trump into the rows of a dingy courtroom. Some strained their necks for a glance at the 77-year-old, according to the New York Times. Trump stood and turned after the judge introduced him as the defendant, giving them a strained smile.
More than half of the prospective jurors in the first panel of 96 people were excused after they told the judge they could not be fair and impartial.
The fact that 45 or so were willing to at least consider it seemed like a pretty good start, thought Joyce Vance, a law professor and former federal prosecutor. “We’re talking about the trial of Donald Trump, so it’s unsurprising lots of jurors might have strong feelings they can’t overcome.” she said. “The whole idea of this proceeding is to weed them out.”
Defence lawyer Caroline Polisi told MSNBC television the hundreds of juror were in a waiting room “kind of being herded like cattle”, and that by slowing the jury selection process even further by simultaneously considering other legal technicalities in the case, Judge Merchan was “not not doing himself any favours in terms of getting the jury pool to want to serve on this jury”.
Polisi said that a big issue for the court to deal with was that of “stealth jurors”, those who had already made up their minds about whether Trump was innocent or guilty.
“These are the one or two jurors who are going to lie in the questioning process because they want to fly under the radar and they want to get on that jury because they’ve already made up their mind one way or the other,” she said. “Those are the people that this process is meant to ferret out… it’s not an easy process.”
Legal pundits say that Trump almost certainly has a team of jury consultants examining the potential jurors’ social media accounts for evidence of their political inclinations. Given the complexity of the process and how much is at stake, selecting the jury could take up to two weeks.
For all his braggadocio, and the affected insouciance as he swaggered into the court building, the cold, hard reality has begun to sink in for Trump. The bronzer was slapped on thick, but he still looked haggard, with bags the size of Melania’s Birkins under his eyes.
Having to stand trial and experience humiliation – and fear – does that. Especially when you’ve been up into the early hours the night before, posting splenetic claptrap in capital letters on Truth Social.
On Tuesday morning, Trump claimed on his social media platform that a gag order relating to the case prevented him from responding to “people that are on TV lying and spewing hate all day long”.
Journalists in court on Monday reported that after glowering for a while, Trump nodded off. He was also observed with his eyes closed on Tuesday afternoon as jury selection was just getting underway. “That’s hardly the way to make a good impression on jurors,” said Vance.
Even when the jury is finally selected, a Tuesday poll suggests prosecutors will have their work cut out in convincing its members of the former president’s guilt.
Overall, only a third of US adults say Trump did something illegal in the hush money case, according to the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey, compared to the 50 per cent of respondents who think he is guilty in the other three criminal cases pending against him. Republican voters were much less likely than Democrats to think Trump had broken the law in the hush payments case.
Nonetheless, the poll suggests that half of Americans would consider Trump unfit to serve as president if he is convicted in the New York courtroom. The outcome of this case, possibly the only one to reach a verdict before November, could assume a historical importance.
Patricia Crouse, a political scientist at the University of New Haven, said interest is high because this is Trump’s first criminal trial.
“Unlike his previous civil trials, which only resulted in monetary settlements, Trump could actually receive prison time if found guilty, she said.
“He is also required to be in the courtroom every day of the trial, which keeps the focus on him. Normally, Trump would thrive on this type of attention but I think eventually it is going to wear him down.”
2024-04-16T15:03:27Z dg43tfdfdgfd