Jury selection in Donald Trump's hush money case encountered new setbacks Thursday, April 18, as two previously sworn-in jurors were excused – one for backtracking on whether she could be impartial and fair and the other over concerns that he may not have been truthful about whether he had ever been accused or convicted of a crime.
Seven jurors were sworn in on Tuesday, but with the excusal of two of them, lawyers now need to pick 13 others to serve on the panel that will decide the first-ever criminal case against a former US president.
Prosecutors on Thursday also asked Judge Juan M. Merchan to sanction Trump over seven more social media posts they say violate a gag order that bars Trump from attacking witnesses.
The prosecution on Monday sought a $3,000 fine against Trump over three Truth Social posts.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged scheme to bury stories he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign.
The allegations focus on payoffs to two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump years earlier, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged Trump had out of wedlock. Trump says none of these supposed sexual encounters occurred.
The case is the first of Trump's four indictments to reach trial.
Legal counsel in Donald Trump's criminal trial has returned to questioning prospective jurors in the case after Judge Juan M. Merchan dismissed a second previously seated juror.
Fifty-seven out of the second round of 96 potential jurors in Donald Trump's hush money trial have been excused after saying they can't serve.
Some 48 people indicated Thursday morning that they could not serve fairly and impartially. An additional nine said they couldn't serve for some other reason, which they were not asked to state.
The seating of the Manhattan jury in Donald Trump's hush money trial will be a seminal moment in the case, setting the stage for a trial that will place the former president's legal jeopardy at the heart of the campaign against Democrat Joe Biden and feature potentially unflattering testimony about Trump's private life in the years before he became president.
The process of picking a jury is a critical phase of any criminal trial but especially so when the defendant is a former US commander-in-chief and the presumptive Republican nominee for this year's presidential election.
Inside the court, there's broad acknowledgment of the futility in trying to find jurors without knowledge of Trump, with a prosecutor this week saying that lawyers were not looking for people who had been "living under a rock for the past eight years."