A New York judge on Thursday dismissed two jurors who’d been sworn to sit on former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial, underscoring the difficulty of selecting a panel for one of the most high-profile trials in American history.
The court started the day with seven jurors and shrank to five.
State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan dismissed a woman who was sworn in two days earlier after she 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.
The other juror, a male IT consultant, was excused after a long, animated sidebar conversation with Judge Merchan and counsel.
Prosecutors objected to Juror No. 4 because they had researched his name and believed he and his wife had been arrested or accused in legal matters, suggesting he did not give an accurate response to parts of the jury questionnaire.
Potential jurors in Mr. Trump’s hush-money trial aren’t being revealed to anyone except counsel.
Yet the female juror said friends, colleagues and family members pieced together who she was, and Judge Juan Merchan opted to excuse her.
The judge said he would 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 male juror was tossed after prosecutors raised concerns that the man had connections to a 1990s arrest for ripping down right-wing posters in Westchester County and that his wife may have been involved in a corruption inquiry.
“I’m directing that Juror Number Four be excused,” Judge Merchan said.
The snags meant that jury selection was heading in the wrong direction as the court tried 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.
Large batches of potential jurors are on standby and filtering into the courtroom. Four dozen of them said they could not be impartial and were swiftly excused Thursday. Nine others were excused for other reasons, such as scheduling conflicts.
Mr. Trump was engrossed by those seated in the jury box for closer questioning. He craned his neck to get a better look at them.
Two of the jurors said they read his most famous book, “The Art of the Deal.”
Mr. Trump hasn’t spoken in the hallways but did raise a clenched fist for the cameras.
He 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 the Middle East and recalled Mr. Trump’s trip to Poland in 2017.