Donald Trump was able to gauge the twelve jurors selected Thursday to decide his fate during his historic criminal trial in New York, with a handful of alternates still missing.
• Read also: Trump trial: jury selection resumes in chaotic fashion
• Read also: Who is Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over Trump’s criminal trial?
• Read also: Trial of Biden immigration minister begins in US Senate
“We have our jury,” judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the proceedings, declared late Thursday afternoon.
“Let’s choose our alternates,” he added, saying he was “optimistic” at the idea that the jury will be definitively constituted on Friday, when five more alternate jurors, out of the six needed, will have been selected.
When the new jurors took an oath to judge the case in a “fair and impartial” manner, Donald Trump, seated at the defense table, did not take his eyes off them.
After this crucial and sometimes laborious stage, the trial of the Republican candidate for the November presidential election will be able to get to the heart of the debates.
The first ex-president of the United States to appear in criminal court, Donald Trump is on trial in a case of hidden payments to buy the silence of a former porn star, Stormy Daniels, a few days before the 2016 election that he had won narrowly against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
A juror throws in the towel
The third day of the hearing got off to a somewhat chaotic start. First, a juror selected Tuesday expressed her fears of being identified, saying she had been recognized by relatives, while the jury is supposed to remain anonymous to avoid pressure.
A short time later, the judge dismissed another jury member, who prosecutors said they discovered after research may not have told the whole truth when answering the lengthy questionnaire given to each potential juror.
These first snags raise in particular the question of the guarantee of the anonymity of the jurors throughout the trial, while Donald Trump, who denounces a “witch hunt”, has lamented several times about being judged in New York, Democratic stronghold.
The Republican candidate echoed on Wednesday, on the Truth Social network, the comments of a Fox News host, Jesse Watters, assuring without proof that “they are in the process of choosing infiltrated progressive activists who lie to the judge to to be part of the jury.
The prosecution and the defense have the possibility of challenging ten jurors each, without providing justification.
The judge has already banned Donald Trump from attacking jurors on social networks.
Life scrutinized
Throughout the day Thursday, Donald Trump watched, in a cold courtroom — “we are freezing,” he said — the ballet of the candidates, anonymous citizens plunged overnight into a historic affair, and whose life is scrutinized.
Several dozen were again challenged, admitting that they could not judge Donald Trump impartially.
“The question is not whether (Donald Trump) is likeable… I preside over trials of defendants who are not always likeable, gang members, murderers, sex offenders,” the judge stressed. .
More than three years after leaving the White House in chaos, Donald Trump theoretically faces a prison sentence. This would not prevent him from being a candidate in the presidential election on November 5, where he dreams of revenge on Joe Biden, but would project the campaign into the unknown.
If he were found not guilty, however, it would be a major success for the Republican candidate.
Especially since he managed through appeals to postpone his three other criminal trials, two for illicit attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, and one for supposedly casual handling of classified documents.
Donald Trump is charged with falsifying accounting documents for his company, the Trump Organization, which allegedly aimed to hide, under the cover of “legal fees”, the payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels by his personal lawyer at the time , Michael Cohen.
In exchange, the former X-rated movie star agreed to keep quiet about a sexual relationship with the billionaire in 2006. Donald Trump has always denied this relationship and his defense ensures that the payments were in the private sphere.
But prosecutor Alvin Bragg intends to demonstrate that these are indeed fraudulent maneuvers to hide information from voters a few days before the vote.
