We’re on to Day 4 of the Manhattan criminal trial of former President Donald Trump and appear to be in the home stretch of the jury selection process. By the end of Thursday, 12 jurors and one alternate had been seated.
Judge Juan Merchan has indicated the plan is to seat six alternates total, meaning five more will need to be selected on Friday. The next panel of 96 prospective jurors has already been sworn, so once things get underway Friday morning, they may proceed fairly quickly. That is unless we see a repeat of Thursday morning (in which two of the already-seated jurors wound up being excused — one after confessing she did not feel she could be fair and impartial and the other after it turned out there were discrepancies between his responses and background information the prosecution discovered regarding him).
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Here’s a rundown of the seven men and five women selected thus far — fair to say there are some who aren’t particular fans of the former president, though some seemed to admire his business success and his bluntness.
Juror 5
This juror said that, as a “woman of color,” she has friends with strong opinions about Trump but that she tries to avoid politics herself and is not very interested in the news. While most of the jurors in the box indicated they were aware Trump faced other criminal cases, this woman signaled she did not.
She did say she likes Trump’s candid style.
“President Trump speaks his mind,” she said. “I’d rather have that than someone in office that we don’t know what he’s doing behind the scenes.”
This juror has lived in Harlem for her entire life and works in education. She gets her information from Google and TikTok, and she listens to “The Breakfast Club,” a radio show in New York City.
The juror’s mother and godfather have worked in law enforcement. Both are retirees from the New York Police Department.
Juror 6
During questioning, this juror said she can treat Trump like any other person on trial. “I would say that I think that Trump and I probably have different beliefs,” she said, “but I don’t think that that invalidates anything about who he is as a person.”
This juror is a native New Yorker who has lived in the Chelsea neighborhood for a year and a half. She works as a software engineer, and she gets her news from the New York Times and TikTok.
Given that Judge Merchan instructed the jurors who were seated on Thursday to return on Monday, Friday may be a relatively short day in court. That may be appreciated by all in attendance if the courtroom remains as cold as it apparently was Thursday. (There were multiple remarks — from the attorneys, jurors, and Trump himself — about how chilly it was.)
Stay tuned here as we bring you live updates of the day’s developments in the case.
