Prospective jurors are dismissed in dozens as Trump’s trial begins

NEW YORK — After years of investigation and weeks of delay, the criminal case known as the People of the State of New York vs. Donald J. Trump went to trial Monday, with hundreds of citizens summoned to potentially join a jury that will decide the fate of the first American president to face prosecution.

But the ritual of choosing the jury got off to a slow start as more than half of the first group of 96 potential jurors raised their hands to say they could not be fair to Trump, demonstrating the challenges of picking an impartial panel in a city where the defendant is widely loathed. The judge immediately excused them.

One prospective juror, a woman in her 30s, was heard outside the courtroom saying, “I just couldn’t do it.”

The prospective jurors, who represented a cross-section of Manhattanites of various ages and demographics, filed past Trump and into the rows of a dingy courtroom. Some strained their necks for a glance at the former president. He stood and turned after the judge introduced him as the defendant, flashing them a tight-lipped smile.

Justice Juan M. Merchan welcomed the prospective jurors to his courtroom, and began to describe the case, which was brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and accused Trump of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. He is facing 34 felony counts, and, if convicted, could face up to four years in prison.

The trial was born from a long-running investigation that began when Trump was still president. He was a target of Manhattan prosecutors in fits and starts over five years, spanning the terms of two district attorneys and multiple grand juries. Not until last March did the current district attorney, Alvin Bragg, secure an indictment.

And the case only went to trial after a three-week postponement. In recent days, Trump continued to stall — as he does in all of his legal cases — but Merchan rejected his eleventh-hour effort to delay the landmark trial.

The Manhattan case, one of four indictments facing the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, may be the only one to make it to trial before Election Day.

Trump is expected to attend much of the trial, bringing his rally-ready chaos to the sober environs of the criminal courthouse, testing the judge’s patience and the limits of the justice system as he goes.

When Trump walked into the courtroom Monday morning, he called the case “an assault on America,” adding, “that’s why I’m very proud to be here.”

Soon after, however, amid a dry exchange of arguments between the lawyers, he nodded off, his mouth slack and his head drooping onto his chest.

And for much of Monday afternoon, Trump was hunched over the defense table as Merchan instructed the prospective jurors.

When the judge explained that if the case ended in a conviction, he would be responsible for imposing an appropriate sentence, Trump let out a sarcastic chuckle. He laughed again when Merchan vowed to ensure a fair trial, as Bragg watched from the second row.

Then began the messy process of selecting a jury for a man who for the first time in the nation’s history will be judged by 12 people in a courtroom before he faces millions more at the polls.

The judge has ruled that the jurors, who could face threats to their privacy and safety, should remain anonymous, though lawyers for both sides will know their names and addresses.

The jury selection process pulled back a curtain on the lives of everyday New Yorkers, offering insights into their politics and hobbies alike. One potential juror, asked about her hobbies, said she liked to “go to the club” — drawing a big laugh from reporters. She was quickly excused after she acknowledged having strong opinions about the former president.

Jury selection will be crucial as both sides seek to weed out people harboring bias. Prosecutors arguably have the upper hand in one of the most Democratic counties in the country.

Of the 96 Manhattanites who entered the courtroom Monday, about two-thirds of them soon exited, either because they could not be fair, or for reasons they kept to themselves.

Those who remained answered a list of 42 questions that offered a sketch of their professional lives, media diets and political sensibilities.

Even before the selection process began, the day featured a flurry of legal developments, many of which favored the prosecution.

Soon after the clerk called the case, the judge announced his decision to remain on the trial, rejecting Trump’s latest effort to oust him.

He also ruled that prosecutors could introduce evidence regarding Trump’s involvement with coordinating negative and positive publicity with the National Enquirer, a tabloid newspaper, during the 2016 presidential campaign.

And Bragg’s office asked the judge to hold Trump in contempt and penalize him $3,000 for violating a gag order barring him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and the judge’s family.

Trump has risked crossing the line a few times. He has reposted articles about the judge’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant, and, this past weekend, he assailed one of the prosecution’s key witnesses: Michael Cohen, his former fixer. Cohen paid $130,000 to adult film actor Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump.

Merchan, a former registered Republican who is now known as a moderate Democrat, is not expected to rule on the contempt request until later this month, and jury selection will not end soon. It could take two weeks or more, and the trial may spill into June.

Trump alternately seemed irritated and exhausted during pretrial arguments Monday. At one point, he sat motionless while a prosecutor read his own comments from the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he bragged about grabbing women’s genitals.

The trial itself will be a remarkable spectacle: a former president will come face-to-face with part of his past that he has tried to bury. Trump, who might take the witness stand in his own defense, has denied the sexual encounter with Daniels ever took place.

But prosecutors say that, while serving as president, he allowed his company to falsify records to hide the reimbursements to Cohen for a 2016 hush-money payment that went to Daniels.

The 12 jurors, once selected, will have to judge Cohen’s story themselves: He is expected to be the prosecution’s star witness, confronting a boss he once idolized and now despises.

Prosecutors argue that his payment to Daniels was part of a pattern: Trump, faced with a swirl of damaging stories during the 2016 campaign, concealed them to influence the election.

In addition to the payment to Daniels, Bragg’s office is expected to highlight two other deals involving the National Enquirer, which has long-standing ties to Trump.

In one deal, the tabloid bought the silence of a man who had heard that Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock, a rumor that turned out to be false, and in the other, it paid Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, who wanted to sell her story of an affair with Trump.

The prosecution’s witness list is expected to include Cohen, David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, and Hope Hicks, a former aide to Trump. Daniels and McDougal could also testify.

And Merchan on Monday rattled off a list of even more familiar people who could come up at trial, though they might not be witnesses. They included Trump’s former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Trump’s wife, Melania.

Trump has twice sought Merchan’s recusal, citing his daughter’s work as a Democratic political consultant. Merchan has declined to step aside, noting a ruling by an ethics commission that found his daughter’s work posed no conflict.

“There is no agenda here,” Merchan said in court Monday. “We want to follow the law,” he added. “We want justice to be done.”

Many of the prospective jurors offered yes-or-no answers to the 42 questions, but a few provided further detail, including a man who identified himself as a bookseller, who may draw skepticism from the defense, which still has an opportunity to excuse him.

“I feel that nobody is above the law, whether it be a former president or a sitting president or a janitor,” he said.