By Kaelan Deese. Media: Washingtonexaminer
The criminal hush money trial against Donald Trump inched forward with jury selection on Tuesday after seven people were impaneled to serve as jurors in the case against the former president.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said he would ask the seven jurors selected to return on Monday, noting at the end of the day that the jury selection process could conclude by the end of the week. Seating seven jurors completes just over a third the selection process, which began Monday.
Trump and his attorney Todd Blanche played a key role in the process. Both the defense and prosecutors interviewed each prospective juror on a variety of questions, including by asking each person’s views about the former president, and were allotted a limited amount of preemptory strikes to object to a person for consideration.
Here are the first seven jurors impaneled for the case:
First juror, foreperson: A man who lives in West Harlem but is originally from Ireland, is married to a spouse currently in school, and has no children. He reads news from the New York Times, the Daily Mail, and some Fox News and MSNBC.
Second juror: A woman who is a native New Yorker and has been an oncology nurse for 15 years. She is not married and has no children but lives with a fiance who works in finance. She gets her news from the New York Times, CNN, and Google and has a Facebook account. Blanche asked her about her views on Trump, to which she replied, “I don’t really have one.”
Third juror: An Asian man who appeared to be in his early 30s. He is originally from Oregon and works as a corporate lawyer. He reads news from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Google.
Fourth juror: A middle-aged man born in Puerto Rico who has been living on the Lower East Side for more than four decades. He said he found Trump to be a “fascinating and mysterious” man. “He walks into a room, and he sets people off one way or another,” the juror said. “I find that really interesting. Really, this one guy can do all of this. Wow, that’s what I think.”
Fifth juror: A young black woman who said she has friends with strong opinions about Trump but also said she is not a political person. She said she appreciates the fact that Trump “speaks his mind and I’d rather that than someone who’s in office who you don’t know what they’re thinking.” Notably, she said she wasn’t aware Trump was being criminally charged until she was called for jury selection.
Sixth juror: A woman who has been a Chelsea resident for a little over a year and a half and works as a software engineer for the Walt Disney Company.
Seventh juror: A man who is a civil litigator, is married with two children, and lives on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. He was born in North Carolina and reads the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and the Washington Post. The juror said he has political views and thoughts about Trump’s policies that he probably disagreed with. “I don’t know the man, and I don’t have opinions about him personally,” he said. “I certainly follow the news; I’m aware there are other lawsuits out there. But I’m not sure that I know anyone’s character.”
More than half of the nearly 100 people processed in the first round of jury selection on Monday were almost immediately excused after they said they could not be fair or impartial in a trial that contains facts and allegations dating back to Trump’s 2016 election. By Tuesday afternoon, the initial group of 96 jurors that began undergoing the process the day before had been narrowed down to 24, according to press pool reports. One person in a final group of potential jurors was added to the panel at the end of the day.
The court will reconvene Thursday to consider the selection of the remaining jurors. The process can’t conclude without the selection of five more jurors and six alternates who are needed before opening arguments can commence. Attorneys for the prosecution and defense are vetting up to 500 people overall.
Jury selection for trials typically takes less than a week, but the stakes and gravitas of the first criminal trial against a former president left room for a longer-than-average time estimate.
But Merchan indicated the selection process could wrap up by the end of this week, with the potential for opening arguments to begin on Monday.
Until then, “put the case out of your mind,” Merchan told the seventh juror. “Don’t think about it, don’t talk about it.”
