A New York judge on Thursday excused a woman who’d been sworn in as a juror for ex-President Donald Trump’s trial but expressed unease about her impartiality and the amount of identifying information about her in public.
The woman known as Juror No. 2 said that, after some consideration, she “definitely has concerns now” about her ability to be fair.
Potential jurors in Mr. Trump’s hush-money trial aren’t being revealed to anyone except counsel. Besides impartiality, this juror said she was worried about the information about her that had been released.
Friends, colleagues and family members told her she’d been identified as a potential juror, and Judge Juan Merchan opted to excuse her.
The judge said he will direct the press not to give identifying physical information about jurors and redact employer information from the public record. Employer information is likely the most telling detail about jurors.
“We just lost” what would have been a good juror for the case, he said.
The episode underscored how difficult it will be to cobble together the 12 jurors, plus four alternates, needed to try a defendant who is the former leader of the free world and the presumptive GOP nominee against President Biden this November.
The Manhattan court had been moving along briskly and swore in seven jurors Tuesday.
Mr. Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records in the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Prosecutors allege Mr. Trump funneled payments to his lawyer Michael Cohen to conceal hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels and two others to avoid bad press around the 2016 election.
Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty and says Democratic prosecutors are trying to stop his presidential campaign.
The trial is expected to last six to eight weeks. The court is not convening on Wednesdays.
Mr. Trump used the midweek break to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda for over two hours at Trump Tower in midtown. Global leaders are reaching out to Mr. Trump in case he returns to the White House.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Duda discussed the war in Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East and recalled Mr. Trump’s trip to Poland in 2017.