Historic NY trial opens for Trump
First day ends with no jurors picked for hush-money case
The historic hush-money trial of Donald Trump got underway Monday with the arduous process of selecting a jury to hear the case charging the former president with falsifying business records in order to stifle stories about his sex life.
The day ended without any jurors being chosen. The selection process was scheduled to resume Tuesday.
The first criminal trial of any former U.S. president began as Trump vies to reclaim the White House, creating a remarkable split-screen spectacle of the presumptive Republican nominee spending his days as a criminal defendant while simultaneously campaigning for office. He’s blended those roles over the past year by presenting himself to supporters — on the campaign trail and on social media — as a target of politically motivated prosecutions designed to derail his candidacy.
“It’s a scam. It’s a political witch hunt. It continues, and it continues forever,” Trump said after exiting the courtroom, where he sat at the defense table with his lawyers.
After a norm-shattering presidency shadowed by years of investigations, the trial amounts to a reckoning for Trump, who faces four indictments charging him with crimes ranging from hoarding classified documents to plotting to overturn an election. Yet the political stakes are less clear because a conviction would not preclude him from becoming president and because the allegations in this case date back years and are seen as less grievous than the conduct behind the three other indictments.
The day began with pretrial arguments — including over a potential fine for Trump — before moving in the afternoon into jury selection, where the parties will decide who among them might be picked to determine the legal fate of the former, and potentially future, American president.
Even as a judge was hearing arguments on last-minute issues, Trump appeared to nod off a few times, his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest.
His lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, passed him notes for several minutes before Trump appeared to jolt awake and notice them.
After the first members of the
his family at the Claremont Apartment Homes, off Route 17 a few miles south of the Coleman Bridge.
“Then we got calls from several of the residents out there who actually were victims of the gun being pointed at them,” Montgomery said. One resident, he said, told deputies that the laser sight from the teen’s gun went “across her face.”
“So the gun was actually pointed at her head at some point,” Montgomery said. The woman had four children in the complex’s playground, “and she was concerned that they were going to be shot.”
When deputies arrived at about 6 p.m., they found the teen in the passenger seat of a gold Honda that was backed into a parking space across from the building where the teen lives with his family. He was the only person in the car.
“He still had the handgun in his lap,” Montgomery said. “So the deputies backed off. Multiple deputies arrived on scene and cordoned off the area and began trying to talk to this individual.”
An overhead map Montgomery showed of the apartment complex showed eight deputies were at the scene, watching the teen from four or five vantage points. The sheriff said the teen never spoke with the officers.
Deputies spoke with the teen’s sister, who was able to connect with him on FaceTime. The sister was “working with us to try to resolve the situation,” and “trying to get him to leave the gun in the car and get out of the vehicle.”
But the teen didn’t speak to her, either. Deputies kept trying to negotiate with him, asking and ordering him “dozens of times” to get out of the car. Finally, Montgomery said, the teen came out on the passenger side holding the gun and phone in one hand.
“He put the cellphone down at one point and picked that back up,” Montgomery said. “But he never did relinquish the firearm and waved it around in the air multiple times. He never responded verbally to anything that we said.”
Montgomery then asked the media at the news conference to stop recording and not take pictures for what he showed next: Small snippets from recordings by two citizens, one from a Facebook Live stream, that showed the leadup to the shooting.
The footage, still posted on Facebook, showed the teen putting something — presumably the cellphone — on the hood of the car, as two deputies crouched down behind a car in the foreground.
“Drop it, man! Drop it!” a deputy called out.
The teen then appeared to make a motion toward the rear of the car, where Montgomery said officers were situated beyond a small playground.
It was difficult to make out the gun on the footage, with Montgomery pointing several times to the firearm to show the media its location. One of the videos appeared to be taken from more than 30 yards away, while the other was partially obscured by a black metal fence surrounding a play area.
Montgomery said he didn’t want to show the footage of the teen being struck.
“The body cam video is better,” Montgomery said. “But the problem is, I’m not going to show you the actual shooting. And that’s how quick it is. … When he starts to go in that direction, and the deputy realizes which direction that round’s gonna go … he shoots him.”
The Facebook Live footage showed about eight officers surrounding the teen, with one running toward him with what appears to be a black medic’s bag.
The teen — who attends high school in York County — moved with his family from another area city, with neighbors saying the family moved into the Claremont Apartments about two months ago.
The deputy who shot the teen has about five years of experience in law enforcement, Montgomery said. He worked for another local police department before starting in York County just over a year ago. The deputy is on administrative leave with pay while the shooting is being investigated.
Montgomery said investigators are now looking into whether the teen might have been under the influence of drugs, which is what his family appears to believe.
“This was not his normal behavior was how it was originally described to us,” he said. “He just never engaged anyone verbally, not even his sister. … He never said a word.”
A woman did not answer the door at the teen’s home, saying through the door that she didn’t want to talk with a reporter.
But a neighbor in the building questioned the police use of force. “It sucks,” the man said. “That the response was shooting. They should have Tased him or used pellets. That wasn’t even attempted.”
Another neighbor, a 37-year-old woman, said she was one of the ones to call the sheriff ’s office after the teen was “openly and freely holding” the gun as he walked around. “It was enough to make my daughter feel threatened,” she said.