It may not be going according to plan so far for Donald Trump in his criminal hush-money trial in New York.
As jurors are being selected MSNBC’s legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted, “These are not the jurors Trump’s looking for.”
Rubin posted to X, formerly Twitter: “NEW: The prospective Trump jurors are a highly educated bunch. The first 9 potential jurors in the box this morning include 8 with college degrees, four of whom have advanced degrees (one JD; three MBAs). ... They include a lawyer, a hedge funder, an investment banker, a woman in publishing, a teacher turned stay-at-home mom, and a retired college administrator. And according to @nytimes, these are not the jurors Trump’s looking for.”
According to a report from The New York Times ahead of the trial:
“Mr. Trump’s lawyers want a jury that includes younger Black men and white working-class men, particularly public employees like police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers. Those who have had bad experiences with the legal system will also be prized by the defense, which has cast the case as politically motivated.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged effort to keep salacious — and, he says, bogus — stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaign. On Monday, Trump called the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg a “scam” and “witch hunt.”
The charges center on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the sexual encounter ever happened.
Prosecutors say the payments to Cohen were falsely logged as legal fees. Prosecutors have described it as part of a scheme to bury damaging stories Trump feared could help his opponent in the 2016 race, particularly as Trump’s reputation was suffering at the time from comments he had made about women.
Trump has acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for the payment and that it was designed to stop Daniels from going public about the alleged encounter. But Trump has previously said it had nothing to do with the campaign.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.
