Donald Trump trial LIVE: First six jurors are chosen after judge dismisses candidates for saying ‘lock him up about Donald on social media

From Rob Crilly, Senior Political Reporter in court for DailyMail.com

Three more prospective jurors were chosen and called into the courtroom to be sworn in.

B89 – an older man originally from Puerto Rico, who now lives on the Lower East SIde and works as an IT consultant. ‘I have no spare time,’ he said when asked about his pasttimes. ‘My hobby is my family.’

B374 – a young, black woman from Harlem, who describes herself as a native New Yorker, and works as an English Language Arts teacher. Her mother and godfather both worked for the NYPD. She said she got her news from Google and TikTok.

B297 – A young, female software engineer who lives in Chelsea and is employed by Walt Disney. She said her interests include plays, restaurants, dance, and watching TV.  And she said she gets her news from the New York Times and TikTok.

‘This will be your permanent seat for the duration of the trial,’ Merchan says to each juror, as each in turn is directed to a seat.

Trailed by two secret service agents, Trump re-entered the courtroom at 4:15 p.m. and took a seat at the defense table.

The six remaining jurors from the first pool of 96 will be led into the room shortly to read their answers to the questionnaire.

Judge Juan Merhcan swore in another batch of potential jurors after the first batch of six where chosen.

96 Manhattan residents streamed into the Manhattan courtroom, looking around nervously and whispering to each other.

One woman looks back at Trump before she steps out of the room after they all vowed to tell the truth.

Trump attorney Alina Habba joined Fox News to discuss his ongoing criminal trial.

She batted down reports that the former president nodded off during proceedings on both Monday and Tuesday, saying it’s ‘unlikely.’

‘If anything, he’s probably brutally bored. I mean it’s painful. They make him sit there through jury selection, the first day was procedural,’ Habba told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum.

‘But no, you know, of [the] report, it’s unlikely. I know him, I sat through trial after trial with him, that never happens. So President Trump is incredibly focused.’

Habba also said that if he gets thrown in jail for violating the judge’s gag order, he will ‘be like Nelson Mandela.’

From Rob Crilly, Senior Political Reporter in court for DailyMail.com

It’s only taken a day and a half but we have our first three jurors to be chosen.

They have survived a 42-question questionnaire, 30 minutes of quizzing by defense and prosecution and – for some – extra scrutiny of social media posts.

Using their court numbers, they are:

B400 – A man originally from Ireland who now lives in West Harlem. He said he works in sales and previously was a waiter. In his spare time he likes to do anything ‘outdoorsy.’ He lives with his spouse and (like many who appeared before the court) has no children. He also said he reads the Daily Mail and watches Fox news, along with the New York Times and MSNBC.

B280 – An oncology nurse who has lived on Upper East Side for the past three years. She lives with her fiance who works in finance, and enjoys spending time with friends and taking her dog to the park. ‘I am here for my civic duty. I’m here to listen to the facts,’ she told defense attorney Todd Blanche earlier in the day.

B381 – A man of Asian appearance with black hair, in his late 20s or early 30s, according to reporters in the courtroom. He is from Oregon originally and has lived in Chelsea for five years. He said he is a corporate lawyer with Gunderson Dettmer, and likes to hike and run.

Judge Merchan rejected a request to dismiss the female juror in seat six over Facebook posts by her husband, which led to a bizarre sequence in court.

Merchan described a meme of a character from The Simpsons holding Trump’s head with a picture of Barack Obama in the frame.

The caption read: ‘I don’t think this is what they meant with orange is the new black’.

The joke appeared to be a play on the skin colour of Obama and Trump.

The judge read out another post which was a meme with the caption: ‘The Avengers Unite against Donald Trump …and to get Mark Ruffalo naked’.

Judge Merchan warned Blanche to only bring a challenge if he ‘had the goods’ on a juror and moved on.

He said that if this was the worst thing they could find about the juror were posts from her husband that were ‘humour, albeit not very good humour’, from eight years ago, it gave him confidence in the juror.

Merchan granted the defense request to strike the juror in seat 2 for cause. 

Before granting the request, he read the language of the social media post in question into he record. 

It read, in part: ‘Good news!!  Trump lost his court battle on his unlawful travel ban!!!”

Merchan said, if the post had ended there he wouldn’t have a problem.

The post later says, ‘Get him out, and lock him up.’

‘This is a person who has expressed the desire…that Mr. Trump be locked up,’ Merchan said.

The judge also that if Trump is found guilty, he faces a potential jail sentence.

Judge Juan Merchan scolded Donald Trump for gesturing while a juror was being questioned.

He told attorney Todd Blanche to speak to his client and said: ‘I will not tolerate that.

‘I will not have any jurors intimated in this courtroom’.

Judge Merchan then denied Blanche’s request to challenge the motion to dismiss the first juror.

Donald Trump’s lead attorney Todd Blanche requested to strike a number of jurors because they had ‘social media posts for that very much contrary to the answers they gave’.

‘We didn’t want to confront them in open court with their social media posts,’ Blanche said.

The first was from the juror in seat one, B133, which Blanche called ‘extraordinarily hostile Facebook posts’.

But Judge Merchan appeared skeptical when he described what the posts were.

Both were around the time of the election – apparently the 2020 election – and one talked about a street party in Manhattan and how the woman wanted to ‘get in the car and spread the honking cheer’.

Another was a picture of a fire escape and the caption: ‘OK, so I have been in the middle of the ocean for the last week. What’s going on?’

Judge Merchan initially asked if he had been handed the right piece of paper.

‘Where does it refer to your client or the election?’ the judge asked.

Blanche protested: ‘The day of the post. It’s clear from the video it’s a celebration of the results of the election’.

Prosecutor Josh Steinglass called the claim ‘ridiculous’ and questioned if it was even the juror’s Facebook page

Judge Merchan chimed in, saying: ‘Show me the bias. I’m serious.

‘I’m trying to understand how this calls into question what the juror said?’

Judge Merchan asked to see the video from the Facebook page for context and then called the juror in for questioning as he said there were ‘enough questions’ to do so.

The former president did not say anything as he walked back to the defense table.

The issues with trying the most famous man in the world are becoming more apparent.

24 hours after jury selection began, no prospective candidates have been selected for the final panel of 12.

Eighteen have made it through two rounds of screening: Including a simple question of whether they think they can be impartial, followed by a series of 42 brutal questions about their lives.

Now the prosecution and defense will decide which members they want to swipe.

Each side has up to 10 disqualifations at their disposal, meaning the process could still drag on.

Experts believe it could take anywhere between five days and two weeks.

A black woman being consdiered for the jury insisted she did not consider herself a political person and admitted she didn’t know Trump was sitting in other criminal trials.

She told the court her friends have strong opinions of the former president, but she didn’t care for politics.

‘President Trump speaks his mind and I’d rather that than someone who’s in office who you don’t know what they’re thinking,’ she said.

When Trump lead attorney Todd Blanche asked the jurors in the box knew there were three other cases against him, she was the only one to raise her hand.

Donald Trump’s lawyers and the prosecutors questioned each lawyer on whether they could be impartial to decide whether they would stay on the panel.

When questioned by Trump’s lead attorney Todd Blanche, a man from Puerto Rico said of Trump: ‘I find him fascinating

‘He walks into a room and he sets people off and I find that really interesting.

‘One guy can do all this. Wow. He makes things interesting. 

‘So many people are set off one way or the other. That’s interesting.’

One older white-haired woman with small black glasses became animated, speaking without the microphone, when it came to the question of whether or not Trump testifies.

‘If he decides not to speak, … that’s your right, you can’t presume that makes him guilty,’ she said, waving her hand for emphasis.

‘It’s really, the prosecutor is the one that has to present those facts and prove them, but as I said, he has the right not to say them.”

At the end of her somewhat impassioned speech, Blanche said, ‘I don’t think I could have said it better myself.’

Another woman admitted she was a fan of the Apprentice in middle school and followed the news around Donald Trump.

There are reports Trump nodded off on the second day of the laborious jury selection process.

It follows a previous report by the New York Times yesterday that he had fallen asleep.

Trump apparently was not pleased with that report, and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said he later ‘glared’ at her.

Today Law360’s Frank G. Runyeon wrote: ‘Trump’s head slowly dropped, his eyes closed. It jerked back upward. He adjusts himself.

‘Then, his head droops again. He straightens up, leaning back. His head for a third time, he shakes his shoulders. Eyes closed still. His head drops. Finally, he pops his eyes open.’

Steinglass asked the jury if they were prepared to ‘come back and look the defendant in the eye and say guilty’ if it was necessary.

He said he was going to ‘go down the line, take a look at the defendant and look inside yourself’ and ask if they could render a verdict of guilty if that was their decision.

Trump stared intently in the direction of the jury as they did so.

All of them indicated they could.

With a heavy dose of understatement, Steinglass told the court that several witnesses in the case ‘have some baggage’ and that one was a tabloid publisher and another was an adult film star.

Then there was Michael Cohen who had ‘pled guilty to several federal crimes including lying to Congress’.

Trump shook his head in frustration when Steinglass said that some witnesses had written books and done podcasts and ‘publicly denied’ many of the matters they were going to testify to in the trial.

Trump’s frustration appeared to be aimed at Cohen, who he has repeatedly called a liar.

Steinglass said that the case was ‘not a referendum on whether you like the witnesses’.

‘Can you separate believability from likability?’ he said.

Nobody in the jury said that was an issue.

Prosecutor Josh Steinglass talks to the 18 potential jurors on a mike at the podium

He says: ‘I’m sure many of you are saying to yourself, how am I being considered for this case?

‘We’re going to ask you to not get out of it resist the urge to flee the courtroom and give the most honest answers you can

‘We’re trying to pick a jury that’s fair to both sides. The defendant in this case is a former President and a current candidate for that office

‘We don’t expect you to have lived under a rock for the past 30 years

‘This case has nothing to do with your personal politics.

‘It’s not a referendum on the Trump presidency, or a popularity contest or an indication of who you’re going to vote for.

‘We don’t care. This case is about whether this man broke the law’.

A juror dismissed from Donald Trump’s hush money case has spoken out after she was sent home.

Kara McGee told reporters outside the Manhattan courthouse that she was dismissed because of scheduling conflicts.

‘I don’t like him,’ she said of Trump. ‘I don’t approve of what he did as president, but the right to a fair trial is extremely important’.

She also spoke to CNN and revealed what it was like to see Trump in court for the first time.

‘It’s fascinating because there are two very contrasting senses.

‘On the one hand, there is this massive sense of gravitas.’

The other, she said, was that she saw Trump sitting there and realized he is ‘just a dude’.

From Rob Crilly, Senior Political Reporter inside court for DailyMail.com

Trump has been following along as jurors answer 42 questions about the law, whether they can serve on a jury, and what they know about Trump.

Question 36 is: ‘The defendant in this case has written a number of books. Have you read (or listened to audio) of any one or more of those books? If so, which ones?’

A twice-married middle aged male prospective juror grabbed Trump’s attention when he answered yes, saying he had read ‘The Art of the Deal’ and ‘How to be Rich.’ 

‘Is that not correct?’ he asks, realising perhaps that he has misremembered the title of ‘How to Get Rich.’

Trump twisted to see the man more clearly, before smiling broadly and nodding to himself.

Donald Trump could face a Mexican immigrant who became nationalized while he was President on his jury.

The man told the court that he became a citizen in 2017 and works in finance.

He said that he lived alone with his dog and liked to travel, see family and friends and go scuba diving and skiing.

His media was the New York Times, Huffington Post, MSNBC and ‘LGBTQ related podcasts’.

It has not been a promising start for jury selection in the courtroom.

Five jurors have already been sent home becuase they admitted they can’t be impartial or because of a scheduling conflict

A male juror who works in finance was dismissed after saying he had concerns about being able to manage his work while serving on the jury.

That’s the third to be dismissed today.

A partner in an accounting and consulting firm was dismissed by the court after saying that he would struggle to be impartial because he grew up in Texas to a Republican family.

The man said that in the accounting world ‘a lot of people intellectually slant Republican’ and he could have some ‘unconscious bias around that’.

The man said he he attended Texas A&M university and ‘growing up a bunch of family and friends were Republicans it’s going to be tough to be impartial’ during the trial

He added that he listened to Barstool sports podcasts and watched Fox News.

Judge Merchan excused him after consulting with lawyers for both sides.

A female juror was then excused after telling the court in a weak voice that after thinking about it ‘I don’t think I can be impartial and unbiased’.

Donald Trump has taken his seat for the second day of jury selection in the Manhattan hush money trial.

He was followed by his loyal aide Margo Martin, who has been by his side since he left the White House.

Outside court, Trump called the case a ‘disgrace’ and lamaneted the fact he is being kept off the campaign trail.

From Senior U.S. Political Reporter Rob Crilly at Manhattan Criminal Court:

It’s Day two of the hush money case and Trump has settled into a routine. He leaves Trump Tower at about 8:30am for the short motorcade journey downtown to Manhattan Criminal Court.

There he rides the elevator to the 15th floor with his team of lawyers, pausing outside courtroom 1530 to talk to a small pool of reporters in the hallway (railing against what he says is election interference by prosecutors on Monday and proclaiming his innocence on Tuesday).

Once inside the empty courtroom he settles down in a leather backed chair between his lawyers, a picture of grim-faced defiance. Behind him Jason Miller, one of his top aides, takes a seat at the back of the court room.

Then about half a dozen photographers are allowed in to take photographs.

Trump  leans forward, chin out in something of a power pose. The message is clear: He won’t be beaten by the court.

‘This is all coming from Biden White House. Because the guy can’t put two sentences together. He can’t campaign.’

‘He’s using this in order to try and win an election. But it’s not working that way, it’s working the opposite way.’

Donald Trump could be excused for a sleepless night before becoming the first US president to face trial on Monday, but his campaign team emphatically rejected claims he actually fell asleep in court.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN that Trump struggled to stay awake and eventually dozed off as jury selection got underway at his hush money trial in New York.

The claim sparked a wave of hashtags on social media and was leapt on by the Biden/Harris campaign – long dogged by Trump’s nickname of ‘Sleepy Joe’ for the sitting president.

From Senior U.S. Political Reporter Emily Goodin:

While Donald Trump is stuck in a New York courtroom this week, his rival Joe Biden will be on the campaign trail, courting voters in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Biden is spending three days in the critical state. On Tuesday, he’ll be in his birth place of Scranton, where he’ll pitch his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy.

As he emphasizes his blue-collar roots, Biden will repeat his argument that Trump, a billionaire, only wants to help the wealthy.

The president will spend Tuesday night in Scranton and then head to Pittsburgh on Wednesday morning. He then returns to the White House, only to turn around and go back to Pennsylvania on Thursday, this time visiting Philadelphia.

Those later stops include fundraisers for his re-election campaign.

Trump won the state from Democrats in the 2016 election, which helped put him in the White House. But Biden took it back in the 2020 contest, although he only won by a mere one point.

Each candidate needs the state if he wants to return to the White House next year.

Trump was last in the state on Saturday, when he held a rally in Schnecksville. The former president’s campaigning has been limited to weekends as he fights off criminal charges in New York.

Donald Trump was in high spirits as he strolled out of his Manhattan residence on Monday morning as he prepared for the trip downtown to court.

Wearing a striped blue tie and light blue shirt, he waved to the crowd before joining the motorcade ahead of the second day of jury selection.

On Monday he was warned by the judge that he could be jailed for misbehaving and slammed warnings that he may have to skip son Barron’s high school graduation

Donald Trump’s nemsis Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg arrived in court on Monday for the second day of jury selection.

The prosecutor, who was sat in the court on the first day, entered the downtown building with two cups from Dunkin Donuts and a banana.

Trump has frequently targeted Bragg and claims he is spearheading the political ‘persecution’ into him.

Donald Trump raised more than a $1million in donations during the first day of the Manhattan criminal trial, his daughter-in-law Lara said.

The co-chair of the Republican National Committee said the average contribution was $28, and ripped into the hush-money case.

‘The people of America spoke up yesterday in support of Donald Trump to the tune of a million and a half dollars raised for his campaign,’ she told Fox and Friends on Tuesday morning.

‘The average donation was $28, so even here, in the abysmal Biden economy, people are coming out and they are financially supporting this president’.

Donald Trump lambasted the judge in his historic hush money trial for potentially refusing him permission to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation next month.

The former president also castigated the judge for stopping him going to the U.S. Supreme Court next week for a hearing related to January 6.

Trump let loose outside court after day one of jury selection as he became the first U.S. ex-president to stand criminal trial.

Barron, 18, graduates from high school on May 17 and the trial is set to still be going on by then.

Hundreds of potential jurors will return to the court this morning to go through the gruelling process of getting on the panel.

Of the more than 50 prospective jurors who initially raised their hands when asked if they felt they couldn’t be fair or impartial:

• More than two dozen were white women
• 14 were white men
• One was a Hispanic woman
• Four were women of Asian descent
• One man was of Asian descent
• Six were ‘unknown’. 

Those who didn’t then were given a list of 42 questions by the judge in the jury box.

Trump is accused paying Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, $130,000 in order for her to keep silent about the pair’s alleged extra marital affair.

Five months before the 2016 presidential election, American Media Inc, the publisher of the National Enquirer, paid McDougal, 53, $150,000 in exchange for her tell all story. The interview was never published.

The alleged affair became public knowledge in a subsequent interview that McDougal did with The Wall Street Journal in 2016.

Trump denies McDougal’s allegations. Her payment is not subject to criminal investigation but prosecutors say it will establish a pattern of behavior on Trump’s part, something Trump lawyer Todd Blanche attempted to argue against.

Judge Merchan said that the jury did not need to hear about the timing of the alleged McDougal affair, which according to the former model, occurred at the time Melania Trump was pregnant with Barron Trump.

Donald Trump returns to a Manhattan court this morning for the second day of jury selection in the hush money trial.

No jurors have so far been selected for the panel in what could be a lengthy process to find a group of impartial Manhattan residents.

More than 50 of the first group of 96 candidates admitted they couldn’t be impartial, and were dismissed by the judge.

Here is what happened as the dramatic first day drew to a close, and where we stand today.