The judge in former President Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial has said he wants opening statements in the case delivered on Monday. In order to do that, he’ll need to seat up to five more alternate jurors Friday.
Twelve jurors and one alternate were seated in the first three days of jury selection. The process has seen dozens of people immediately excused from consideration for saying they couldn’t be impartial, and two seated jurors were excused after being sworn in. One said she became concerned about her ability to be impartial after people in her life figured out she was a juror based on details reported about her in the press. Prosecutors flagged another after discovering a possible decades-old arrest that hadn’t been disclosed during jury selection.
The jurors and alternates who have been sworn in were selected from two groups of 96 Manhattanites summoned for jury service. About two dozen potential jurors remain under consideration from the second group. If the remaining five alternates can’t be found from that group, a third batch of 96 who were sworn in Thursday will be brought back into the courtroom.
The judge, Juan Merchan, indicated that If the remaining alternates are selected early enough Friday, he will also hold a pretrial hearing to set the scope of topics prosecutors would be allowed to broach if Trump decides to take the stand in his own defense.
Prosecutors indicated in a filing made public Wednesday that they want to question Trump about a host of high-profile legal defeats to attack his credibility. The list includes an almost half-billion-dollar civil fraud judgment recently handed down in another New York court, a pair of unanimous civil federal jury verdicts finding him liable for defamation and sexual abuse of the writer E. Jean Carroll, gag order violations, and sanctions for what a judge concluded was a “frivolous, bad faith lawsuit” against Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s attorneys have indicated they believe all those topics should be out of bounds in this case, which revolves around reimbursements to former Trump attorney Michael Cohen for a “hush money” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors say Trump covered up the reimbursements in order to distance himself from the payment, days before the 2016 presidential election, which temporarily bought Daniels’ silence about an alleged affair. He has also denied having the affair.
Trump has entered a not guilty plea to 34 felony counts of falsification of business records. He has denied all allegations in the case.