Trump Jurors Will Be Asked About Antifa, QAnon and Truth Social
(Bloomberg) — Potential jurors at Donald Trump’s first criminal trial will be asked whether they belong to fringe groups like Antifa and QAnon, as well as whether they’ve been to rallies supporting or opposing the former president.
Justice Juan Merchan included the questionnaire in a letter Monday to lawyers for Trump and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case. It hints at how contentious the jury selection process may be when it starts April 15 in New York. It could take up to two weeks to pick a jury, or about a quarter of the trial.
Bragg alleges Trump falsified dozens of business records to conceal a hush money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election to keep her quiet about an alleged affair. The payoff was part of alleged scheme to influence the 2016 election by preventing salacious stories about Trump from being published.
The questionnaire is similar to those in Trump’s two civil trials earlier this year, both of which he lost. But more is at stake in Trump’s first criminal trial, and lawyers on both will be under intense pressure to select jurors who can be fair, even if they hold strong opinions about the former president.
Potential jurors will also be asked if they use Trump’s social-media platform Truth Social, whose parent company has lost billions of dollars in market value since it started trading publicly two weeks ago. They’ll also be asked if they belong to any anti-Trump groups or if they have any “feelings of opinions about how Mr. Trump is being treated in this case?”
The questionnaire is coming together as Trump makes a last-ditch effort to get Merchan removed from the case over claims that his daughter might profit professionally from the proceeding as an employee of a consulting firm that has Democrats as clients.
Trump has argued that a survey his lawyers commissioned demonstrated that they jury pool in Manhattan is too liberal or leans too Democratic for him to get a fair trial. Bragg argued in response that Trump’s own survey results shows that most of the island’s inhabitants are confident they can deliver a verdict based only on the evidence.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
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Published: 09 Apr 2024, 03:03 AM IST
