This is a special edition of Opinion Today on Donald Trump's hush-money trial, featuring insights from contributors to The Point, Opinion's blog. Today, Jonathan Alter reports from inside the courthouse.
It isn't easy being orange in Manhattan, but it helps to have a bunch of jury consultants scouring the web for anyone with a sense of humor about you. Even spouses making bad orange jokes. Donald Trump's legal team isn't wrong to be concerned about bias. In the first batch of potential jurors in his hush-money trial, more than half volunteered that they could not be fair and were dismissed. And when a former Lands' End employee was found to have posted in 2017 on Facebook to "lock him up," Justice Juan Merchan rightly dismissed the potential juror for cause. Same for a bookseller who posted an A.I. parody video of Trump saying he is "dumb as …." But as the court seated six jurors on Tuesday (out of 12, plus a half-dozen alternates), Trump and his lawyers tried the judge's patience. I wish there were audio footage of the angry voice from the bench when Merchan told Trump's lawyers that the defendant "was audible, he was gesturing and he was speaking in the direction of the juror. I will not tolerate that. I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom."
A few minutes later, the still-irritated judge said he thought that Trump's lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, was using the jury selection process to — wait for it — delay the proceedings. When Blanche tried to have a high school teacher from the Upper West Side dismissed for cause because she had taken a cellphone video of a street dance party on 96th Street celebrating Joe Biden's victory, the judge summoned the potential juror. After ascertaining that she was sincere in her assurance that she could be fair, he refused to dismiss her for cause. And Merchan rebuked Blanche for also offering a video the juror took of New Yorkers saluting health care workers by banging pots and pans each night at the start of the Covid pandemic. Blanche suggested the video was disqualifying, but the judge said there was "nothing offensive" about it, adding that making such irrelevant challenges was a waste of everyone's time. When the defense wanted Juror No. 3 dismissed for cause because her husband posted three joking photos (one during the transition from Barack Obama to Trump with the caption "I don't think this is what they meant by 'orange is the new black'"), the judge was not amused. "If this is the worst thing you were able to find," he said, "that her husband posted this not very good humor from eight years ago, it gives me confidence that this juror could be fair and impartial."
Will Trump finally get the message that he's not calling the shots? Not likely, but the judge will almost certainly keep delivering it for the duration of this trial. More on Trump's trial:
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Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Opinion: Trump’s jury of peers takes shape
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