Final jurors seated for Trump’s hush money case
Opening statements set for Monday
NEW YORK — The final jurors were seated Friday in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, and an appellate judge rejected the former president’s latest bid to halt the case as a hectic day in court set the stage for opening statements to begin Monday.
The panel of New Yorkers who will decide the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president took final shape after lawyers spent days quizzing dozens of potential jurors on whether they can impartially judge Trump in the city where he built his real estate empire
before being elected in 2016.
The trial thrusts Trump’s legal problems into the heart of his hotly contested race against President Joe Biden, with Trump’s opponent likely to seize on unflattering and salacious testimony to make the case that the presumptive Republican nominee is unfit to return as commander in chief.
Trump, meanwhile, is using the prosecution as a political rallying cry, casting himself as a victim while juggling his dual role as criminal defendant and presidential candidate.
Judge Juan Merchan said lawyers will present opening statements Monday morning before prosecutors begin laying out their case alleging a scheme to cover up negative stories Trump feared would hurt his 2016 campaign. He has pleaded not guilty and says the stories were false.
Despite the failure of repeated previous attempts to delay the trial, a Trump attorney was in an appeals court hours after the jury was seated, arguing that Merchan rushed through jury selection and that Trump cannot get a fair trial in Manhattan.
“To think an impartial jury could be found in that period of time, I would respectfully submit, is untenable,” attorney Clifford Robert said.
Justice Marsha Michael denied the request just minutes after a brief hearing.
Back in the trial court, Merchan expressed frustration as Trump’s lawyers pressed to revisit a litany of pretrial rulings.
“At some point, you need to accept the court’s rulings,” Merchan said. “There’s nothing else to clarify. There’s nothing else to reargue. We’re going to have opening statements on Monday morning. This trial is starting.”
Just after the jury was seated, emergency crews responded to a park outside the courthouse, where a man had set himself on fire. The man took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories and spread them around the park before dousing himself in a flammable substance and setting himself aflame, officials said. He was in critical condition Friday afternoon.
Trump has spent the week sitting quietly in the courtroom as lawyers pressed potential jurors
Huffpost. The Waldos began hanging out in the band’s circle and the slang spread.
Fast-forward to the early 1990s: Steve Bloom, a reporter for the cannabis magazine High Times, was at a Dead show when he was handed a flyer urging people to “meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais.” High Times published it.
“It’s a phenomenon,” one of the Waldos, Steve Capper, now 69, once told The Associated Press. “Most things die within a couple years, but this just goes on and on. It’s not like someday somebody’s going to say, ‘OK, Cannabis New Year’s is on June 23rd now.’”
While the Waldos came up with the term, the people who made the flier distributed at the Dead show — and effectively turned 4/20 into a holiday — remain unknown.
HOW IS IT CELEBRATED?
With weed, naturally. Some celebrations are bigger than others: The Mile High 420 Festival in Denver, for example, typically draws thousands and describes itself as the largest free 4/20 event in the world. Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has also attracted massive crowds, but the gathering was canceled this year, with organizers citing a lack of financial sponsorship and city budget cuts.
College quads and statehouse lawns are also known for drawing 4/20 celebrations, with the University of Colorado Boulder historically among the largest, though not so much since administrators banned the annual smokeout over a decade ago.
Some breweries make beers that are 420-themed, but not laced, including purposes, including Sweetwater Brewing in Kentucky, where medical Atlanta, which is throwing marijuana legislation that a 420 music festival this passed last year will take weekend and whose founders effect in 2025. Additional went to the University states permit only products of Colorado. with low THC, marijuana’s
Lagunitas Brewing in main psychoactive Petaluma, California, ingredient, for certain
nd releases its “Waldos’ medical conditions.
Special Ale” every year But marijuana is still on 4/20 in partnership illegal under federal law. It with the term’s coiners. is listed with drugs such as That’s where the Waldos heroin under Schedule I of will be this Saturday to the Controlled Substances sample the beer, for which Act, meaning it has no they picked out “hops that federally accepted medical smell and taste like the use and a high potential dankest marijuana,” one for abuse.
Waldo, Dave Reddix, said The Biden administration, via email. however, has
4/20 has also become a taken some steps toward big industry event, with marijuana reform. The vendors gathering to try president has pardoned each other’s wares. thousands of people who were convicted of “simple possession” on federal land and in the District of Columbia.
The Department of Health and Human Services last year recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration that
THE POLITICS
The number of states allowing recreational marijuana has grown to 24 after recent legalization campaigns succeeded in Ohio, Minnesota and Delaware. Fourteen more states allow it for medical marijuana be reclassified as Schedule III, which would affirm its medical use under federal law.
According to a Gallup poll last fall, 70% of adults support legalization, the highest level yet recorded by the polling firm and more than double the roughly 30% who backed it in 2000.
Vivian Mcpeak, who helped found Seattle’s Hempfest more than three decades ago, reflected on the extent to which the marijuana industry has evolved during his lifetime.
“It’s surreal to drive by stores that are selling cannabis,” he said. “A lot of people laughed at us, saying, ‘This will never happen.’”
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Mcpeak described 4/20 these days as a “mixed bag.” Despite the legalization movement’s progress, many smaller growers are struggling to compete against large producers, he said, and many Americans are still behind bars for weed convictions.
“We can celebrate the victories that we’ve had, and we can also strategize and organize to further the cause,” he said. “Despite the kind of complacency that some people might feel, we still got work to do. We’ve got to keep burning that shoe leather until we get everybody out of jails and prisons.”
For the Waldos, 4/20 signifies above all else a good time.
“We’re not political. We’re jokesters,” Capper has said. “But there was a time that we can’t forget, when it was secret, furtive. ... The energy of the time was more charged, more exciting in a certain way.
“I’m not saying that’s all good — it’s not good they were putting people in jail,” he continued. “You wouldn’t want to go back there.”