Jury selection is set to resume in former President Donald Trump‘s hush money trial in New York City after a break in action Wednesday.
With seven jurors already having been selected from a pool of 96, the schedule for Thursday will focus largely on questioning potential jurors in a second group of the same size to see whether they can be fair and impartial when it comes to Trump. The judge has said he hopes to have 12 jurors, as well as alternates, selected by the end of Friday.
Prosecutors and lawyers for Trump will have less opportunity to dismiss potential jurors going forward, because both used six of their 10 peremptory challenges Tuesday.
While both sides can make an unlimited number of challenges for cause, it is up to the judge to decide whether to grant those challenges and strike those jurors. State Judge Juan Merchan dismissed two jurors for cause Tuesday, one of whom had posted a “lock him up” message about Trump on Facebook, but he denied some other challenges.
Trump bemoaned the number of challenges he can make Wednesday.
“I thought STRIKES were supposed to be ‘unlimited’ when we were picking our jury? I was then told we only had 10, not nearly enough when we were purposely given the 2nd Worst Venue in the Country,” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, before he blasted the case as “election interference.”
Under New York law, defendants charged with lower-level felonies like Trump are entitled to only 10 peremptory strikes.
The scheduled day off Wednesday followed some fireworks in the Manhattan courtroom, where Merchan chided Trump for appearing to speak to one of the potential jurors who was being questioned about a Facebook post in which she had apparently celebrated Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.
“I won’t tolerate that. I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear,” Merchan said.
Eventually, seven jurors were sworn in Tuesday: two lawyers, a teacher, an oncology nurse, an IT consultant, a teacher and a software engineer.
The jury foreperson — who typically leads and steers the jury and acts as its spokesperson — is a married man who lives in West Harlem and works in sales. He told Merchan he reads The New York Times and watches Fox News and MSNBC.
The jurors’ names were not made public because Merchan, citing security concerns, has decided to use an anonymous jury.
Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records and has pleaded not guilty. He faces up to four years in prison if he is convicted.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office alleges that Trump falsified business records to hide money he was paying his former lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse him for $130,000 he paid adult film actor Stormy Daniels near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels has claimed she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied that he slept with Daniels, but he has acknowledged repaying Cohen.
The DA’s office also alleges that American Media Inc. paid $150,000 to model and actor Karen McDougal, who appeared in Playboy magazine and claimed that she had a nine-month affair with Trump before he was elected president, “in exchange for her agreement not to speak out about the alleged sexual relationship.”
Trump has also denied having a sexual relationship with McDougal.