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April 19, 2024 – 02:19
(Keystone-ATS) The jury of twelve people in the historic criminal trial in New York of former US President Donald Trump has been constituted, Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the proceedings, announced Thursday. Alternates must still be appointed.
“We have our jury,” the judge said late Thursday afternoon. He said he was “optimistic” that the jury would be definitively seated on Friday, when five of the six necessary alternate jurors will have been selected.
Donald Trump, seated at the defense table, did not take his eyes off the new jurors when they took an oath to judge the case in a “fair and impartial” manner. After this crucial and sometimes laborious stage, the trial of the Republican candidate for the November presidential election will be able to get to the heart of the debates.
The first ex-president of the United States to appear in criminal court, Donald Trump is on trial in a case of hidden payments to buy the silence of a former pornographic film star, Stormy Daniels, a few days before the 2016 election which he had won narrowly against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
A juror throws in the towel
The third day of the hearing got off to a somewhat chaotic start. First, a juror selected Tuesday expressed her fears of being identified, saying she had been recognized by relatives, while the jury is supposed to remain anonymous to avoid pressure.
A short time later, the judge dismissed another member of the jury, who prosecutors said they discovered, after research, may not have told the whole truth when answering the lengthy questionnaire given to each juror potential.
These first snags raise in particular the question of the guarantee of the anonymity of the jurors throughout the trial, while Donald Trump, who denounces a “witch hunt”, has lamented several times about being judged in New York, Democratic stronghold.
The Republican candidate echoed on Wednesday, on the Truth Social network, the comments of a Fox News host, Jesse Watters, assuring without proof that “they are in the process of choosing undercover progressive activists who lie to the judge to be part of the jury”.
Life scrutinized
The judge has already banned Donald Trump from attacking jurors on social networks.
Throughout the day Thursday, the billionaire attended, in a refrigerated courtroom – “we are freezing”, he said – the ballet of the candidates, anonymous citizens plunged overnight into a historic and whose life is scrutinized. Several dozen of them were again challenged, admitting that they could not judge Donald Trump impartially.
“The question is not whether [Donald Trump] is sympathetic… I preside over trials of defendants who are not always sympathetic, gang members, murderers, sex offenders,” the judge emphasized.
More than three years after leaving the White House in chaos, Donald Trump theoretically faces a prison sentence. This would not prevent him from being a candidate in the presidential election on November 5, where he dreams of revenge on Joe Biden, but would project the campaign into the unknown.
Three other criminal trials
If he were found not guilty, it would, however, be a major success for the Republican candidate, especially since he managed through appeals to postpone his three other criminal trials, two for illicit attempts to reverse the 2020 election results and one for allegedly casual handling of classified documents.
Donald Trump is charged with falsifying the accounting documents of his company, the Trump Organization, which allegedly aimed to hide, under the cover of “legal fees”, the payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels by his personal lawyer. era, Michael Cohen.
In exchange, the ex-pornography star agreed to keep quiet about a sexual relationship with the billionaire in 2006. Donald Trump has always denied this relationship and his defense assures that the payments were in the private sphere. But the prosecutor intends to demonstrate that these are indeed fraudulent maneuvers to hide information from voters a few days before the vote.
