Jury selection in the controversial New York City criminal trial of former President Donald Trump faced challenges on Thursday as two of the seven jurors who had been selected were dismissed.
Judge Juan Merchan dismissed one seated juror early Thursday and a second later in the day, according to numerous reports.
The Manhattan court that will be criminally prosecuting Trump for allegedly “falsifying business records” in the Stormy Daniels “hush money” case is seeking 12 impartial jurors and six alternates.
Dozens of potential jurors were immediately sent home Monday.
Thursday, the process was going in the wrong direction as two of seven jurors who had been chosen for the trial were disqualified.
According to the New York Post, a man identified only as juror number four was dismissed when questions were raised about an old criminal case he had been linked to.
Per the report, the man was at one point heard loudly asking in court, “Let me ask you a question … Do you all feel this way?”
The rest of what was said was inaudible to reporters in the room.
Merchan reportedly spoke with the man for a period of about four minutes before he dismissed the man from the case.
Will Trump get a fair trial?
NBC News reported the man had “expressed annoyance about how much information was out there about him in the public.”
Merchan then decided to send the man home and to seal a transcript wherein the juror had spoken about information that was described as “highly personal.”
The Washington Post offered further insight into what might have led to the juror’s dismissal.
“Prosecutors flagged him as a concern because someone with his name was arrested in the 1990s for tearing down right-wing posters and is married to a woman who entered a deferred prosecution agreement over corruption charges,” the Post’s Rachel Weiner reported.
The other juror was released on Thursday after an admission she would be unable to be impartial as a member of the jury.
Per the Post, after her friends identified her as one of the jurors, “she worried about her ability to be a fair and impartial juror, after ‘sleeping on it overnight.’”
Trump faces 34 felony counts in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s trial against him — all of which he has pleaded not guilty to.
The 2024 presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee is the first president in U.S. history to be tried criminally.
