Lawyers spent days quizzing dozens of New Yorkers to choose the panel that has vowed to put their personal views aside and impartially judge whether the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is guilty. The jury includes a sales professional, a software engineer, an English teacher and multiple lawyers.
Just after the jury was seated, emergency crews responded to a park outside the courthouse, where a person was on fire. People rushed over with a fire extinguisher and worked to bat the flames away before the person was taken away on a stretcher. The person's condition was not immediately known.
The trial will place Trump in a Manhattan courtroom for weeks, forcing him to juggle his dual role as a defendant and political candidate against the backdrop of his hotly contested race against President Joe Biden.
Trump has spent the week sitting quietly in the courtroom as lawyers press potential jurors on their views about him in a search for any bias that could preclude them from hearing the case. During breaks in the proceedings, he has lashed out about the allegations and the judge to cameras in the hallway, using his mounting legal problems as a political rallying cry against a justice system that has been corrupted by political bias.
Over several days, dozens of members of the jury pool have been dismissed after saying they don’t believe they can be fair. Others have expressed anxiety about having to decide such a consequential case with outsized media attention. The judge has ruled that their names will be known only to prosecutors, Trump and their legal teams.
As more potential jurors were questioned Friday, Trump appeared to lean over at the defense table, scribbling on some papers and exchanging notes with one of his lawyers. He occasionally perked up and gazed at the jury box, including when one would-be juror said he had volunteered in a “get out the vote” effort for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Another prospective juror got Trump’s attention when he mentioned that he follows the White House Instagram account, including when Trump was in office. Trump shot a grin at one man who was asked if he was married and joked that he had been trying to find a wife in his spare time, but “it’s not working.”
The trial centers on a $130,000 payment that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, made to porn actor Stormy Daniels to prevent her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump from becoming public in the final days of the 2016 race.
Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of the payments in internal records when his company reimbursed Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2018 and is expected to be a star witness for the prosecution.
Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.
