Donald Trump has returned to the Manhattan courthouse for the second day of his closed-door trial, as lawyers try to choose the twelve jurors who will have to determine the guilt or innocence of the first former president of the United States to face criminal charges. What happened on Monday was a harbinger of how difficult this task is. About half of the 96 potential jurors questioned were dismissed after claiming they could not impartially judge the businessman-turned-politician, who is preparing for his return to the White House while fighting four different criminal cases.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charges Trump with 34 felonies for falsifying business records and thereby covering up a payment of money to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election to maintain her silence. Daniels claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump approximately a decade earlier. Trump declares his innocence and denies that this meeting took place.
To prove the crime, prosecutors must show that Trump concealed the payment as an illegal contribution to his presidential campaign. Trump has said the payment was personal. His lawyers have said that the main motivation for paying Daniels was not the election campaign but to spare him and his family embarrassment.
It is not the only cause for which Trump is in court. In other cases he is accused of having mishandled classified documentation when he was president or of having tried to reverse his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden. But the Daniels case may be the only one that goes to trial before Trump faces Biden again in the Nov. 5 election. If he is convicted, Trump could run for a second presidency. But a Reuters/Ipsos poll has revealed that a quarter of his fellow Republicans would not vote for him if he were found guilty.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in all four criminal cases and claims he is the target of a plot by Biden’s Democrats to neutralize him politically.
Although the New York case focuses on events that took place more than seven years ago, prosecutors are trying to hold Trump accountable for more recent conduct as well. On Monday, they asked Judge Juan Merchan to fine Trump $1,000 for each of three social media posts this month in which he criticized Daniels and Michael Cohen, the lawyer who worked for Trump and a former mediator in the case, who is expected to be a prominent witness in the trial. Under a gag order imposed by Merchan, Trump is prohibited from making statements about witnesses, court staff and family members who seek to interfere with the case.
