The examining judge of the trial Donald Trump The selection of the 12 jury members who will seal the fate of the first former president in United States history to sit on the bench and who seeks to return to the White House in November’s election has been completed.
“We have our jury,” announced at the end of an intense day the examining magistrate Juan Merchan, who “hopes” to complete the selection of the six replacements this Friday, after interviewing almost two hundred candidates and overcoming some setbacks such as the Replacing two resigned members of the top 7 members selected on Tuesday.
A group of 22 candidates return to the room this Friday to answer the 42-question questionnaire about their profession, their place of work, the newspapers they read and the social networks they use, which both the defense and the prosecution examine with a magnifying glass to determine their political leanings.
The judge asked the press not to provide any information about the people selected, whose identities remain secret for security reasons and to avoid harassment.
And impartiality and anonymity are basic requirements of a jury that bears the enormous responsibility of judging the virtual presidential candidate of the Republican Party in the middle of the election campaign.
At the end of the meeting, Trump complained to the press that the trial was keeping him from campaigning. He also protested against the temperature in the Manhattan Supreme Court room where he is witnessing this “unfair trial.”
“I’m supposed to campaign in many places,” he said, and instead: “I’ve been sitting here for days, from morning to evening in this ice-cold room,” he complained.
Manhattan prosecutors accuse the tycoon of 34 counts of falsifying accounting records at the family business Trump Organization to buy the silence of a former porn actress for an extramarital affair so she wouldn’t interfere in his 2016 election campaign, which he won against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Prosecution witnesses include the tycoon’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who paid former actress Stormy Daniels out of his own pocket and passed it off as legal fees, for which he has already been convicted after pleading guilty.
The 77-year-old Republican tycoon has pleaded not guilty to charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Only the unanimity of the jury can convict him.
Merchan hopes arguments in the case will begin on Monday before the witness parade, although he will adjourn the session at 2 p.m. local time to accommodate Passover celebrations, a schedule that will be maintained on Tuesday.
SPRING: AFP
