The opening arguments of the first criminal trial of a former president in the history of the United States could begin next Monday in New York, after this Thursday the selection of the 12 regular members of the jury that will be in charge of ruling on innocence or guilt of Donald Trump. The calendar for this trial, probably the only one the Republican candidate will face before the November presidential elections, is moving faster than expected, and there could be a verdict before June.
The magnate is accused of 34 crimes related to the document falsification scheme that he created to bribe porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016. In the middle of the election campaign, he bought her silence about an extramarital relationship they had had a decade ago, and justified the payment , of $130,000, as part of his legal expenses. The accusation for document falsification – presented a year ago by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg – is aggravated by an alleged violation of the electoral campaign financing laws, since the commission of the crime served to hide relevant data from the American people about the candidate.
“We already have our jury,” announced the judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchán. There will be seven men and five women, anonymous citizens of New York, with varied professions: a salesman, a financial advisor, a lawyer, an engineer and a teacher, among others. With the selection of the six substitutes still to be completed, in the coming weeks they will have to listen to the arguments of prosecutor Bragg and Trump’s defense, as well as relevant witnesses such as probably Daniels herself or the magnate’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who made the payment in 2016 and was later reimbursed by Trump.
At the beginning of this week, the jury selection process appeared to be complicated by the former president’s polarizing public profile, which made it difficult to find 12 people capable of impartially judging the former president. The hundred New York citizens who have passed through the court this week as candidates have had to answer 42 questions designed to verify their impartiality: “What media do you consume?”, “Do you consider yourself a follower of the QAnon movement?” “Do you have a strong opinion about former president and candidate Donald Trump?”, among others.
During Thursday’s session, two of the jurors who had already been selected were excused by Judge Merchán, one of them out of concern that the media had made too many details of her life public, meaning she had lost her anonymity. among his close circles. The reasons for the other dismissed jury were not revealed, but prosecutors had alleged a lack of credibility in their answers.
Of Trump’s four indictments, this case is the one that Americans view with the most skepticism, according to a survey published last week by Ipsos. Just over a third of those who responded to the survey rate the crimes as “very serious”, unlike the other three trials, which are perceived that way by more than half of the population.
In Washington, he is accused of trying to reverse the results of the 2020 elections; in Georgia, for his attempt to manipulate the vote count in that key state; and in Florida, for taking and retaining more than a hundred classified documents in his private Mar-a-Lago club, in Palm Beach, when leaving the White House in 2021.