On Day 2, Trump met some of his jurors. His lawyers met their social media accounts.
Four men and three women were selected as jurors at Trump's criminal trial.
NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s first criminal trial may be taking him off the campaign trail, but on Tuesday he still managed to meet a few members of the public: seven of the New Yorkers who will sit on his jury.
The jurors — who include a West Harlem man originally from Ireland, an Upper East Side oncology nurse and two lawyers — were sworn in on the second day of the trial, as the process to select a total of 12 jurors, plus a few alternates, consumed the day’s proceedings.
Four of the jurors chosen so far are men; three are women. Once the full panel is selected — which could happen by the end of the week — the trial will enter its next stage: opening arguments and the presentation of evidence. The jury will decide whether Trump is guilty of having falsified business records to mask a hush money payment to a porn star who claimed she had a sexual encounter with him. Prosecutors say the cover-up in the final weeks of the 2016 election deprived voters of important information about Trump’s conduct with women.
Other jurors sworn in Tuesday are a man originally from Puerto Rico who works as an IT consultant, a Harlem woman who works in education and a software engineer who lives in Chelsea.
The seven Manhattanites were selected from an initial crop of 96 prospective jurors who began the jury-selection process on Monday afternoon. Dozens of people were dismissed from the pool outright when they told the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, that they could not be impartial. Others were dismissed after further questioning — with some removed by the judge himself and others removed by the prosecution or defense teams, each of which are entitled to strike a small number of prospective jurors without giving a reason.
The trial will break on Wednesday and resume Thursday morning with a new batch of prospective jurors.
In a fitting move for a defendant whose public persona has been crafted in large part by his social media behavior, Trump's lawyers have mined the depths of prospective jurors' social media accounts for potential signs of bias in their years-old comments and memes. Several of them were cut on Tuesday after the judge examined their prior posts.
Merchan dismissed one man after Trump lawyer Todd Blanche presented a social media post in which the juror wrote, “Good news!! Trump lost his court battle on his unlawful travel ban!!!” along with a suggestion to “lock him up.”
In other instances, however, Merchan refused Blanche’s effort to kick off certain prospective jurors, including one whose husband shared a post suggesting that the comic book team “The Avengers” unite against Trump.
Though Trump himself said little during the day’s events, he earned himself his first reprimand from Merchan.
"Your client was audibly uttering something," Merchan told Blanche after he had finished questioning a prospective juror.
"I won’t tolerate that,” Merchan said. “I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear."
Merchan instructed Blanche to tell Trump to stop his antics. As Merchan spoke, Trump sat slumped in his seat, as though he were sitting in a lounge chair.