Reality may be finally starting to sink in
Unless you’ve been on Mars for the past 10 years, the chances are you’ll have a strong opinion on Donald Trump.
Among Americans, feelings on the polarising former president veer towards either adoration or loathing. Thus finding 12 good men (and/or women), with sufficiently open minds on the subject of Trump’s guilt or innocence in the hush payments case is a Herculean task.
Trump was back in a New York courtroom yesterday as a judge battled to assemble a jury.
More than 500 Manhattan residents have turned up at a courthouse to see if they are sufficiently impartial to judge the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for allegedly disguising payments issued to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels. He denies all the charges.
Potential jurors have to answer a 42-question form about their backgrounds and opinions, and hang around for hours, in the tortuous process of finding 12 people and six substitutes that both prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers can agree on.
More than half of the prospective jurors in the first panel of 96 people were excused after they told the judge they could not be fair and impartial. The fact that 45 or so were willing to at least consider it seemed like a pretty good start, thought Joyce Vance, a law professor and former federal prosecutor, said: “It’s unsurprising lots of jurors might have strong feelings they can’t overcome. The whole idea of this proceeding is to weed them out.” The defence lawyer Caroline Polisi (inset) said that a big issue for the court was that of “stealth jurors”, those who had already made up their minds about whether Trump was innocent or guilty.
“These are the one or two jurors who are going to lie in the questioning process because they want to fly under the radar and they want to get on that jury,” she said.
For all his braggadocio as he swaggered into the court building, the cold, hard reality has begun to sink in for Trump. The bronzer was slapped on thick, but he still looked haggard, with bags the size of Melania’s Birkins under his eyes.
After glowering for a while in court on Monday, Trump nodded off. “That’s hardly the way to make a good impression on jurors,” Vance said.