Trump trial day 1 highlights: Court adjourns for the day with no jurors picked

After jurors were dismissed, the judge declined a request from Trump’s lawyers to take April 25 off from the trial so the former president could attend Supreme Court arguments on his claims of presidential immunity in another of his four criminal cases.

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche said Trump’s situation deserved accommodation. “It’s not very often that you have someone who has multiple criminal indictments at the same time,” he added.

Merchan said that as a criminal defendant, Trump “is required to be here. He is not required to be at the Supreme Court.”

In response, Trump rolled his eyes, scowled and stood up to leave, as court was breaking for the day.

Prospective jurors today included a married Upper West Side resident with a master’s degree who has worked for the New York City government for 20 years, enjoys cooking and the arts, and gets news from The New York Times, CNN and Google. Another is a married West Harlem resident who works in sales, has some college education, enjoys the outdoors, and has a news diet that includes The New York Times, Daily Mail, Fox News and some MSNBC. Another prospective juror works as a prosecutor in the Bronx but vowed an ability to be fair and impartial as a juror.

All said nothing would prevent them from being fair and impartial, and that they had never gone to Trump or anti-Trump rallies or followed either him or organizations critical of him on social media, or supported any of a list of a half-dozen far-right- and far-left-leaning groups.

Judge Merchan dismissed the prospective jurors for the day with a warning not to discuss the case or search for any news related to the defendant, prosecutor or judge.

They were instructed to return at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow morning.

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The first juror to say he has a strong opinion about whether a former president may be criminally charged in state court is a book-seller living on the Upper West Side. “I feel that nobody is above the law, whether it be a former president or a sitting president or a janitor,” the man responded. On the question of whether anything would prevent him from being fair and impartial if selected, the man responded curtly: “No.”

Correction: A former headline noted that the man said he could not be impartial. In fact, he said that nothing could prevent him from being impartial.

In a tender moment, Judge Merchan preemptively excused a man from the jury panel rather than forcing him to possibly miss his child’s wedding on the West Coast in June.

The middle-aged man raised the issue as he was about to answer the jury questionnaire.

“I think we should be done by then but I can’t promise,” Merchan told the man. “Only you can decide if you want to roll the dice. But if you’re with us, you’re with us ’til the end.”

As the man contemplated the potential conflict, Merchan offered to let him go. “I think, to be on the safe side, we should excuse,” Merchan said. “Congratulations,” the judge added, wishing him well on his child’s impending nuptials as he exited the jury box.

Earlier in the questionnaire, the woman, a Harlem resident, indicated she could be neutral in deciding the case. But when asked whether she had strong opinions about the former president, the woman answered matter of factly, “Yes.”

When Merchan asked her to repeat the response, she replied: “Yeah, I said yes.” She was promptly dismissed.

As she left the courtroom, she was heard saying, “I just couldn’t do it.”

More than half of the group was excused after telling the judge they couldn’t be fair and impartial. At least nine more prospective jurors were excused after raising their hands when Judge Merchan asked if they could not serve for any other reason. Those reasons were not disclosed.

It’s not unusual for potential jurors to want to be excused for a variety of reasons, including having strong feelings about the defendant.

In an effort to make the trial more efficient, the judge said he would prefer to dismiss jurors immediately if they indicated, at the start, that they couldn’t be fair and impartial. That’s a departure from a more common practice of questioning jurors more closely, individually, to see if their claimed lack of impartiality was true.

Trump’s lawyers have been arguing to an appeals court that he can’t find a fair and impartial jury in Manhattan and that the case needs to be moved elsewhere.

Another batch of potential jurors is waiting to be called into the courtroom. Merchan has said a total of about 200 jurors are in the courthouse for possible selection.

Eighteen randomly selected prospective jurors are now in the jury box to answer 42 preselected questions, some with multiple parts. The potential jurors were handed a list of the queries, and each one was running down the list and answering them, mainly with yes-or-no responses. The inquiries touch on their educational backgrounds, news habits, hobbies and ability to be fair and impartial.

Both of the first two prospective jurors said they lived in midtown, had never attended a Trump or anti-Trump rally and felt they could be impartial.

On a question about whether she had any strong beliefs about the former president, the first respondent paused briefly, then said, “No.”

As the jurors ticked through the list of questions, Trump held a stapled stack of papers close to his face, appearing to follow along with the answers.

More than a dozen court officers stand sentry along the wood-paneled courtroom walls and in the aisle between the rows of wooden gallery benches where jurors are sitting.

In their initial moments in the courtroom, most jurors remained composed and did not visibly react upon sitting down and looking forward. One male juror turned to his left as he walked into the courtroom, appeared to see Trump and smiled. Two female jurors spoke to each other as one gestured forward toward Trump from the courtroom audience behind the defense table. Another man in the jury box gazed back toward the gallery, studying the prosecution’s support team, which includes a desk with several computers a few feet from the jury box.

Prospective jurors are about to be asked by a show of hands, row by row, if they believe they cannot be fair and impartial or cannot serve. Those who are excused will be referenced in the courtroom by a preassigned number so as not to be identified.

Judge Merchan read aloud dozens of people who may serve as witnesses or whose names may be mentioned during the trial. The lengthy list included several Trump family members, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

Ninety-six potential jurors just filed through the courtroom in lower Manhattan. That means about 100 are still waiting elsewhere, standing by as the defense and prosecution seek to winnow the field down to a panel of just 12, plus six alternates.

For every day spent on duty, jurors are to be paid $40, either by their employer of the state of New York. Courts can allot an additional $6 per day if service extends beyond 30 days.

Dozens of the former president’s supporters waved flags with slogans like “Trump or Death” and “Trump 2024 Save America” in the morning.

Twenty-one-year-old Jay Finkle, a native New Yorker, said he voted for Trump in 2020 and the charges against him don’t affect his plans to vote for him again. “Yeah, this doesn’t matter at all,” he said.

By afternoon, the crowd had dwindled to just over a dozen people.

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Judge Merchan is now explaining boilerplate juror duties: “The jury’s responsibility is to evaluate the testimony and all of the evidence presented at the trial.”

“The trial is the opportunity for you to decide if the defendant is guilty or not guilty,” he added.

Some of the prospective panelists craned their necks to get a look at Trump as they took a seat in the back of the room. One giggled and put her hand over her mouth, raising her eyebrows as she exchanged a glance with her neighbor.

Trump is looking straight ahead, expressionless, head slightly cocked.

Judge Merchan is extolling the importance of jury service while explaining the basics of the case.

“You are about to participate in a trial by jury. The system of trial by jury is one the cornerstones of our judicial system,” Merchan told the jurors. “The name of this case is the People of the State of New York vs. Donald Trump.”

“The defendant in this case is Mr. Donald J. Trump,” the judge said, and Trump and his legal team stood to be introduced.

Biden met earlier Monday in the Oval Office with Iraq’s prime minister; in the afternoon, he’s meeting with the Czech prime minister.

“I’m sure he’ll get an update at some point today, but his focus right now are the meetings that he has,” says White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

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The date of the hearing for whether Trump will be held in contempt of court has been changed from April 24 to April 23, 9:30 a.m., per Judge Merchan.

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Prior to the prospective jurors’ entry, Trump was engaged in an animated conversation with his lead attorney, Todd Blanche, gesturing with his palms and wagging his finger.

Blanche responded with his hand blocking his mouth, occasionally jotting things down on a pad in apparent response to Trump’s comments. Trump’s other attorneys, Emil Bove and Susan Necheles were off to the side, speaking as well. Two of Trump’s aids, Jason Miller and Margo Martin, were also in the back of the courtroom.

A group of 96 potential jurors are being called into court for the start of jury selection in Donald Trump’s hush money case.

Selection marks the start of the trial and a singular moment in U.S. history. It’s the first criminal trial of any former U.S. commander-in-chief and the first of Trump’s four indictments to go to trial.

The names of all jurors will be kept secret, except to the legal parties. During selection, prospective jurors will be referred to by an assigned number rather than their names.

Twelve jurors and six alternates will be chosen to hear the case. Judge Merchan has written that the key in choosing a juror is “whether the prospective juror can assure us that they will set aside any personal feelings or biases and render a decision that is based on the evidence and the law.”

Merchan said once the panel is finalized, he will get two lists: one containing the jurors’ numbers, the other containing their names and their numbers. The judge said he will then give one copy of each list to the prosecution and one copy of each list to Trump’s defense team.

The lists are “not to be photographed or duplicated, in any way copied in any way shape or form,” Merchan warned.

The prospective jurors started going through security at 2:05 p.m. ET.

Judge Merchan has temporarily left the bench.

The afternoon began with a squabble over the Trump team’s planned exhibits at trial. Noting that the judge issued an order in February telling the lawyers to comply immediately with state laws on notifying their adversaries in advance of some evidence, prosecutors asked the judge to give the defense 24 hours to follow through and bar anything that wasn’t identified by then.

Trump’s lawyers asked for another day, saying they have been working through hundreds of thousands of pages of material they got only in recent months from a related federal investigation.

Merchan put his foot down at 24 hours, noting that the defense team has had weeks to go through the material and had filed many requests and appeals meanwhile.

“The way you choose to use your time is your business,” the judge said.

The judge will hold a hearing April 24 on prosecutors’ request to fine Trump $3,000 over social media posts that they say violated the judge’s gag order barring him from attacking witnesses.

Judge Merchan said Trump’s lawyers have until April 19 to file their written response. Trump’s lawyer has said the former president’s comments did not violate the gag order.

The gag order bars Trump from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors.

The former president waved and gave a thumbs up to a camera positioned in the hallway as he walked by.

The first day of court proceedings in the New York hush money case against Trump is halfway over and a jury is no closer to being seated.

Trump’s defense attorneys have repeatedly sought to delay the case and Monday morning was consumed with pretrial matters. And judge Merchan will hear arguments regarding a more weighty matter this afternoon: whether Trump should be fined.

The court’s pace so far could herald a long trial: It will likely take multiple days to winnow down a pool of hundreds of potential jurors.

Once the trial begins in earnest, it’s expected to last six to eight weeks.

Police say they are investigating a bomb threat at the home of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg from Monday morning. A police spokesperson says a 911 caller reported the threat shortly before 9 a.m.

Another bomb threat made to the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building was unfounded and there was no disruption to service, a library spokesperson said.

Prosecutors are asking Judge Merchan to hold Trump in contempt of court and fine him over three social media posts, $1,000 per post.

Over the last month, he disparaged prosecution witnesses Cohen and Daniels as “two sleaze bags,” circulated an earlier statement from Daniels and lashed out at what he claimed was a double standard by prosecutors.

The gag order, imposed March 26, bars the ex-president from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors. It was later expanded to bar him from talking publicly about relatives of the judge and of District Attorney Bragg, though Trump is free to speak about the officials themselves. Trump’s attorneys are fighting the order in an appeals court.

▶ Read more about Trump’s gag order.

One of Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, maintained that the three posts referenced “do not violate the gag order.” He said Trump is just responding to to the witnesses’ own public statements.

“It’s not as if President Trump is going out and targeting individuals, he is responding to salacious, repeated vehement attacks by these witnesses.”

The court has now adjourned until 1:30 p.m.

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“The defendant has demonstrated his willingness to flout the order. He’s attacked witnesses in the case,” said Christopher Conroy, one of the trial prosecutors.

Trump’s demeanor in the courtroom appears relatively muted compared to some of his previous court hearings when he frequently shook his head and was warned about speaking out of turn.

While lawyers argued about what evidence might be admissible during the trial, Trump slouched forward, casting his gaze at the desk in front of him and, briefly, up toward the ceiling. At another point, Trump flipped through a document in front of him at the defense table.

Earlier, Trump pursed his lips and scanned a row of reporters before following his security detail out of the courtroom during a break in the proceedings.

He cuts off yet another tangential debate about procedures for filing motions, saying there are 500 jurors waiting and he isn’t keen to engage on such minutia.

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Judge Merchan is still considering pretrial matters before potential jurors come in. It’s not uncommon for judges to consider motions before a trial. In this case, Trump’s defense attorneys have pushed for a string of delays.

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In the tape, Trump described grabbing women sexually without their permission.

The judge had previously denied prosecutors’ request to play the video that became public during the final weeks of the 2016 campaign in which Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic.

But the judge said prosecutors will be able to present internal campaign emails that Assistant District Attorney Steinglass said contained “powerful evidence of the campaign’s reaction to the incendiary language contained in the Access Hollywood video.”

The judge also declined a second request by prosecutors to allow into evidence a deposition related to the incident taken during Trump’s previous civil defamation trial with E. Jean Carroll.

During the debate over what evidence each side would be able to introduce, prosecutors occasionally showed copies of articles, emails and other material they sought to introduce on the courtroom monitors. Trump could be seen hunching over in his seat and staring into a computer monitor directly in front of him on the defense table while the evidence was shown.

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Merchan has agreed to bar prosecutors from eliciting testimony to the effect that Trump’s wife Melania was pregnant while former Playboy model Karen McDougal claimed to have had an affair with him.

Prosecutors can still tell jurors about alleged efforts to suppress McDougal’s story.

McDougal was paid $150,000 in 2016 by the parent company of the National Enquirer for the rights to her story about her alleged 10-month affair with Trump in the mid-2000s. Trump denies any affair.

The company suppressed McDougal’s story until after the election. American Media Inc. has acknowledged that its payments to McDougal were done specifically to assist Trump’s election bid and were made “in concert” with his campaign.

The charges in this case pertain only to $130,000 in hush money payments made, through Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen, to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She alleged a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.

But prosecutors also plan to bring up McDougal’s claims and payment. Prosecutors say it’s important context for what they have called in court papers a scheme “to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information” about Trump.

▶ Read more about the key players in the hush money case.

Shortly after court convened Monday, Trump’s attorneys asked the judge to expand the already extensive questionnaire filled out by jurors to weed out people who oppose the former president. Merchan declined the request, dismissing the notion that the jury questions were slanted to the benefit of prosecutors.

Over the coming days, the defense and the prosecution will both jockey for potential advantages as a jury pool of regular people is winnowed down to a panel of 12, plus six alternates.

“There is no asymmetry in the questionnaire when looked through the lens of what we’re trying to accomplish,” Merchan said. “This is by far the most exhaustive questionnaire this court has ever used,” he added.

The National Enquirer helped boost Trump’s 2016 candidacy by identifying and suppressing negative stories — a practice known as “catch and kill.”

Judge Merchan said such material would be permitted under a state law allowing evidence of alleged prior bad acts.

Trump and his then-lawyer Michael Cohen met with ex-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker at Trump Tower in August 2015 to discuss the supermarket tabloid’s role in helping his presidential run.

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Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass told the judge the meeting was the root of a scheme to suppress three potentially damaging stories about Trump, including porn actor Stormy Daniels’ claims she had a sexual encounter with him in 2006.

Steinglass said the evidence will show that Trump approved, rejected or suggested changes to flattering National Enquirer stories about him and published stories attacking his 2016 Republican primary opponents that were “timed perfectly to achieve maximum impact.” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche argued the evidence “would do nothing but confuse the jury about the actual crime charged.”

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Even before announcing the 34-count felony indictment against Trump last year, Bragg was a lightning rod for conservative critics who said he wasn’t tough enough on crime. Trump’s trial will test the Democrat’s efforts to portray himself as apolitical in the face of relentless attacks from the Republican former president and his supporters, who say the prosecution is the epitome of partisanship.

Echoing the racist tropes he has deployed frequently against his legal adversaries, Trump has called Bragg a “thug” and a “degenerate psychopath,” urging his supporters to take action against the “danger to our country.”

▶ Read more about District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

As the court day started, Judge Merchan turned down a request Trump’s lawyers had filed asking that the judge recuse himself — a move they also unsuccessfully made earlier in the case.

The Trump legal team pointed largely to the judge’s daughter’s work as a political consultant whose firm has worked for prominent Democrats, including President Biden.

Trump’s lawyers have argued that the daughter’s job represents a conflict of interest for the judge, and they also claimed she had posted an image of Trump behind bars on social media. The court system said she had closed the social media account before the photo was posted.

Trump’s attorneys also argued that an interview that Merchan gave to The Associated Press last month violated judicial rules about not making out-of-court comments about a pending case.

The article, which largely concerned Merchan’s oversight of Manhattan’s mental health court, reported that he declined to discuss the Trump case but said preparations for the historic trial were “intense.”

Merchan added that he was striving “to make sure that I’ve done everything I could to be prepared and to make sure that we dispense justice,” emphasizing his confidence in court staffers.

“There’s no agenda here,” the judge said in the interview. “We want to follow the law. We want justice to be done.”

On Monday, Merchan said Trump’s attorneys didn’t “reasonably or logically explain” how those statements, “which merely emphasized the rule of law, in any way expressed bias or violated (the) defendant’s rights.”

Trump’s lawyers have requested that the trial not be held on May 17 so that the former president may attend his son Barron’s high school graduation. A Trump lawyer has also requested the trial not be held June 3 so that he could attend his own son’s graduation.

Merchan said he was not prepared to rule on either request, but that if the trial proceeds as planned he’s willing to adjourn for one or both days. “It really depends on how we’re doing on time and where we are in the trial,” Merchan said.

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A pair of video monitors are airing the proceeding to an overflow room adjacent to the main courtroom. The room is packed with press, court officers and a few members of the public.

The list of media members includes prominent Trump critic and attorney George Conway, who is reporting for The Atlantic. Conway was married to Kellyanne Conway while she served as a senior presidential adviser in the Trump White House.

Ron Sinibaldi, a former accountant from Long Island, says he began lining up at the courthouse just before midnight to ensure he could get inside “for the historic day.”

“I read presidential biographies, I go to presidential libraries, I’m here for the history,” Sinibaldi said. “If they were doing this to Jimmy Carter, I’d be here too.”

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Speaking to reporters and cameras in the hallway, Trump said the case was unlike anything that had ever happened before concluding that he was “very honored to be here.”

He took no questions before entering.

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Hands folded, Trump is staring straight ahead as his lawyers settle in around him. He’s flanked for the proceedings by attorneys Todd Blanche to his right and Emil Bove and Susan Necheles to his left.

Hundreds of people from Manhattan will file into the courthouse today to be considered as possible jurors in a process that could take multiple days.

The judge may also have additional pretrial motions to consider. Trump has already tried repeatedly to have the trial delayed.

Around 200 Trump supporters are outside the courthouse and roughly 40 other individuals are there protesting against the former president.

One group of demonstrators is carrying a banner that reads “No one is above the law.”

Another group chanted that the judge overseeing Trump’s trial, Juan M. Merchan, should recuse himself. Trump had unsuccessfully pushed for the judge to remove himself from the case.

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It’s the first criminal trial of any former U.S. commander-in-chief and the first of Trump’s four indictments to go to trial.

Because he is also the presumptive nominee for this year’s Republican ticket, the trial will produce the head-spinning split-screen of a presidential candidate spending his days in court and, he has said, “campaigning during the night.”

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Exiting Trump Tower, he raised his fist and waved before walking into his SUV.

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Cameras are lined up near barriers made of metal bike racks, while demonstrators carry signs. One oversized placard made of white fabric and tall metal poles reads “Convict Trump already” in blue and orange spray-painted letters.

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The trial is expected to begin at 9:30 a.m.