All that is missing is their substitutes. The twelve jurors in Donald Trump's criminal trial were sworn in on Thursday in New York court. “We have our jury. Let's choose our substitutes,” declared late Thursday afternoon Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the proceedings. He said he was “optimistic” that the jury would be definitively constituted this Friday, when five more alternate jurors, out of the six needed, will have been selected.
When the new jurors took an oath to judge the case in a “fair and impartial” manner, Donald Trump did not take his eyes off them. The first former president of the United States to appear on criminal charges, Donald Trump, 77, who hopes to return to the White House in 2025, has been obliged to attend this crucial and sometimes laborious stage of jury selection since Monday.
Donald Trump gets annoyed
Dozens of citizens, immersed overnight in this historic affair and who see their lives scrutinized by the defense and the prosecution, looking for signs of partiality, came before him one after the other. “I should be in lots of places campaigning,” he once again protested to journalists after the hearing. “I have been sitting here for days, from morning to night, in this frozen room,” he lamented.
Less than seven months before the November presidential election, the Republican candidate is on trial in a case of hidden payments to buy the silence of a former porn star, Stormy Daniels, a few days before the 2016 election that he won narrowly against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
After a break on Wednesday, the trial resumed in a somewhat chaotic manner, with one juror already selected asking to throw in the towel, for fear of being identified, while the jury is supposed to remain anonymous to avoid pressure. A short time later, the judge dismissed another member of the jury, with prosecutors doubting his sincerity.
These first clashes notably raised the question of the guarantee of the anonymity of the jurors throughout the trial, while Donald Trump, who denounces a “witch hunt”, lamented several times about being judged in New York , Democratic stronghold. The Republican candidate took up this Wednesday, on the Truth Social network, the comments of a Fox News host, Jesse Watters, assuring without proof that “they are choosing infiltrated progressive activists who lie to the judge to be part of the jury.
“The question is not whether Trump is likeable”
Several dozen candidates were challenged again this Thursday, admitting that they could not judge Donald Trump impartially. “The question is not whether (Donald Trump) is likeable… I preside over trials of defendants who are not always likeable, 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 a revenge on Joe Biden, but it would project the campaign into the unknown.
If he were found not guilty, however, it would 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 results of the 2020 election, and one for supposedly casual handling of classified documents.
In the case tried in New York, Donald Trump is charged with falsifying accounting documents from 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 attorney at the time, Michael Cohen.
VIDEO. Trump facing criminal justice: the former president denounces an “attack on America”
In exchange, the former X-rated movie star agreed to keep quiet about a sexual relationship with the billionaire in 2006. Donald Trump has always denied this relationship and his defense ensures that the payments were in the private sphere. But prosecutor Alvin Bragg intends to demonstrate that these are indeed fraudulent maneuvers to hide information from voters a few days before the vote.