Picking jurors for the DJT trial

Various sources are reporting about the seven people seated so far as jurors on DJT’s election fraud/hush money trial. The New York Law Journal reports:

Seven jurors have been sworn in to serve on the Manhattan criminal case of Donald Trump—including two lawyers—after Trump’s legal team sought unvarnished opinions about their client.

Most responses could be categorized as reluctant, if not unresponsive, to the broad question.

“I have political views as to the Trump presidency,” said the man who is now Juror No. 7, as well as a civil litigator at Hunton Andrews Kurth. He previously worked at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.

“I don’t know the man and I don’t have opinions about him personally,” he added. “I have political views, I’m happy to answer that question, but I’m not sure that I know anyone’s character.”

Many eventual panelists and dismissed potential jurors expressed similar sentiments—that they did not hold opinions or would be able to contextualize them insofar as they held those opinions.

Not a single juror or prospective juror said anything negative about Trump. Under questioning, the Manhattanites expressed that all that matters in a criminal case is the facts—and whether they’re proven.

[Trump attorney] Todd Blanche asked Juror No. 7 if he would be able to put aside his feelings about being a lawyer and consider the testimony of a disbarred attorney—meaning Cohen—in an unbiased way.

“Yeah, I am a litigator and I take that responsibility seriously,” he responded.

That makes me very uneasy. It is hard to believe that there are many people who know something more about DJT than just his name but have no opinion of him personally. That strikes me as especially true for Juror 7, who is a litigator. Litigators see all of the aspects of human beings, including when they are under serious stress and threat in lawsuits.

At this point, I hope that these people have been picked because juror screening at this point has found a few people who actually feel the way they say they feel. But as the New York Law Journal writes, some of the responses of potential jurors feels reluctant, or unresponsive and thus evasive. If there is evasion going on here, it could cut for or against DJT.

Reporting by Slate raises a different concern about the jury, namely putting them in danger for their lives by doxxing them:

Several jurors were eliminated after Trump attorney Todd Blanche confronted them with old Facebook posts that either intimated distaste for Trump or outright said as much. Most of these jurors were eliminated via peremptory challenge by the Trump legal team, though a few were eliminated for cause—including one who had posted on Facebook “get him out and lock him up” about Trump in response to the former president’s Muslim travel ban.

The jurors that remained are a diverse group. It may have been impossible to see their faces from the overflow room where I (and most of the press corps) watched jury selection, but we still learned a whole lot about these men and women who will sit in judgment of a former president in the first such criminal trial in U.S. history.

Here is a quick primer on the jurors, who are anonymous.

Juror No. 1, foreperson

Juror No. 1 was also selected as the foreperson, meaning he will preside over jury deliberations and act as the communicator with the court. He gave some of the most anodyne answers to the 42-part questionnaire and direct voir dire. According to pool descriptions, Juror No. 1 showed up to court on Monday in a black T-shirt and carrying a black backpack. He is from Ireland but now lives in West Harlem. Juror No. 1 is married, with no kids, and said he gets his news from the New York Times, the Daily Mail, Fox News, and MSNBC. (The first and fourth responses may be why the prosecution was OK with having him on the jury; the second and third answers may be why the defense was.) During individual voir dire, Juror No. 1 was brief and to the point. When asked what he knew or thought of some of the other Trump criminal cases, Juror No. 1 replied, “I’ve heard of some of them, yeah.” When asked if he had an opinion of them, he said, “None at all.” This might have been what landed this juror the foreperson job.

Juror No. 2

Juror No. 2 is a native New Yorker and oncology nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering, who lives on the Upper East Side with her fiancé and dog. She gets her news from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Google. When asked if she would accept evidence and give it due weight even if it comes from witnesses with questionable backgrounds—such as a tabloid publisher, a former adult film star, and a lawyer like Michael Cohen who has changed his story—she responded: “I’m going to say no. I’m going to listen to all the facts. Whatever outside influences there are, they’re not going to influence me here.” When asked by Blanche as to whether she had any opinions of President Trump, she responded, “I don’t really have one especially, in this court room. I think he should be treated as anyone else and nobody is above the law.” When pressed on that question, she did not give an answer about Trump but said “I’m here for my civic duty and not let anything persuade me either way.”

Juror No. 7

Juror No. 7 lives on the Upper East Side and is originally from North Carolina. He is a Big Law civil litigator at Hunton Andrews Kurth who previously worked at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. According to the pool report, he presents as “white—tanned—and in his late middle age.” He is balding with close-cropped hair and wears glasses. He reads the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and Washington Post and listens to WNYC and the podcasts SmartLess and Car Talk. When asked if his expertise as a lawyer would influence his ability to serve as a juror in this case—basically whether or not he’d override the judge’s rulings about the law with his own feelings about them—he responded that he’d “follow the judge’s instructions.” “I’m a civil litigator which means I know virtually nothing about criminal law,” he conceded. As for his opinion of Trump, Juror No. 7 said, “I don’t know the man and I don’t have any particular opinions about him personally.” He liked some of Trump’s policies and didn’t like others. “I certainly follow the news, I am certainly aware that there are other lawsuits out there,” Juror No. 7 said. “I’m not sure I really know anything about his character.”

At least some of those jurors will probably not remain anonymous for long given the amount of detail about them that is being reported. For example, law firms usually show photos of their attorneys. Once those names get out, those jurors and their families will be in real danger from enraged MAGA freaks with guns.

This is going to be an interesting lawsuit. I hope nobody gets killed along the bumpy road to justice.