Trump to return to court for third day of jury selection in hush-money trial
Donald Trump is due to return to a New York courtroom on Thursday for the third day of his hush-money trial and a continuation of the process of jury selection for one of the most highprofile criminal cases in US history.
So far, seven people have been selected after intense grilling of a jury pool that has sifted through prospective jurors’ political views, personal lives and social media posts to decide who gets to sit in judgment over a former US president – and current virtual certainty for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Five more jurors and six alternates remain to be chosen. Those selected so far are an information technology worker, an English teacher, an oncology nurse, a sales professional, a software engineer and two lawyers.
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The spectacle is playing out in downtown Manhattan amid intense global media coverage as Trump became the first former US president to face criminal charges – related to allegedly false accounting of expenses paid to help cover up potentially bad press during his 2016 election campaign.
They include payments to former adult actor Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal – both of whom say they had affairs with Trump.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of the alleged effort to keep the scandalous stories – which he says are not true – from emerging during his eventually successful effort to win the White House in 2016.
Trump also faces other trials involving his actions on January 6, attempts to subvert the 2020 election in Georgia and charges related to his keeping of classified documents at his resort in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, after he had left office. However, those cases have been hit by multiple delays as Trump’s legal team pursues a strategy of slowing down their march to a courtroom until after the November election.
Despite these legal travails, Trump dominated the Republican nomination race for 2024 and has knocked out any serious rival. He is also running a close race with Joe Biden, often leading in head-to-head polls and performing strongly in the crucial battleground states that he needs to win the US presidency for a second time.