The court’s dry rituals only made the proceedings more surreal, as New York Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchán warned Trump that he could be impeached or sent to prison if he interrupted the trial or failed to appear, and Prosecutors said they would try to arrest him. Trump in contempt before even a single potential juror was questioned.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, openly disparaged the trial when he spoke to reporters in the courthouse hallway. “This is an attack on the United States,” he declared, calling the case a “political prosecution … that should never have been started.”
Once inside the courtroom, however, Trump was hardly disruptive. He often seemed bored or disinterested in the legal jousting that occupied the entire morning session.
Shortly after the lunch break, as Merchan read a long series of instructions to potential jurors, Trump closed his eyes and at times appeared to fall asleep. He would then abruptly recover and harden his stance.
That of the former president The liveliest moments in court came when the judge was not on the bench. Trump chatted with his lawyers at the defense table, sometimes making them laugh or smile.
As hundreds of potential jurors waited on another floor, attorneys argued for hours Monday morning over what evidence should be shared with them and a host of legal questions large and small.
It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that the first group of 96 potential jurors entered the courtroom to begin the voir dire selection process. Almost immediately half of them left, having raised their hands when asked who could not be fair or impartial in a case involving Trump.
One prospective juror said she had strong feelings about Trump that could interfere with her ability to be fair. A Harlem resident who recently started working at Bloomingdale’s said that in her spare time she liked to sing, watch television and “go to the club.” She was excused from jury duty after attorneys consulted with the judge. As she left, she told a police officer: “I just couldn’t do it.”
Merchan tried to keep the high-profile case on balance, at one point urging prosecutors and defense attorneys to “sit back and relax” as he laid out the issues still to be decided.
But he also angered Trump by ruling that he could not be excused from the trial to attend Supreme Court arguments next week over Trump’s immunity claims in one of his three other pending criminal cases. And Merchan was noncommittal when Trump asked for a day off next month to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the judge as biased against him. His lawyers have repeatedly failed in their efforts to remove Merchan from the case. On Monday, the judge signaled his displeasure with Trump over recent public statements attacking his former attorney Michael Cohen, a key witness in the case, after the judge had issued a gag order explicitly prohibiting such comments.
Prosecutors argued that Trump had made three social media posts in the past two weeks that violated the judge’s order. They asked that he be fined a total of $3,000, found in contempt and warned he could be sent to prison If you keep making those comments.
When Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, responded that his client needed to be able to respond to political and public attacks from Cohen and others, Merchan maliciously asked the lawyer to point out where in his gag order he had made such an exception. . The judge scheduled a hearing on the matter next week.
Trump’s unique status as a defendant who is also a former and future president came up frequently in the early hours of the trial, the first of four Trump faces, and the only one that has not been significantly delayed by pretrial proceedings. and appeals.
Criminal defendants, Merchan noted, have the right to participate in private questioning of potential jurors, but if Trump did that, he would be joined by Secret Service agents, creating logistical obstacles for court officials.
Prosecutors have charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records, part of what they say was a criminal scheme to cover up Cohen’s 2016 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her silent about his alleged meeting with Trump years before.
Cohen was repaid those payments after Trump won the 2016 presidential election, but those payments were classified as a legal advance. Concealing the true purpose of the payments constitutes a crime, prosecutors charge.
In a case so closely tied to an alleged sexual relationship, attorneys spent much of Monday discussing what the jury can be told about other alleged indiscretions in Trump’s life.
Prosecutors wanted to tell jurors that he also had an affair with Karen MacDougal, a Playboy model, at a time when his wife, Melania Trump, was pregnant with their child.
Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, argued that would poison the jury against his client, for something that was not a crime and has no bearing on the charges he faces.
“The risk of unfair bias is through the roof,” Blanche said, from “lewd details about a completely different situation.”
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass argued that the details of the McDougal affair were important to show Trump’s mental state and behavior when allegations of sexual misconduct arose against him.
The judge said the jury could be told about the matter, but not the additional details. that at the time Melania Trump was pregnant. That detail, she said, was damaging, although she reserved the right to change her mind on the matter. as other evidence is presented during the trial.
Since the 1980s, Trump’s fame and notoriety has been fueled in part by the tabloid press, and prosecutors have made clear that they intend to use that scrappy relationship against him to show that he made the hush money payment. to prevent voters from finding out about their shameful peccadilloes. .
Merchan agreed to let prosecutors tell the jury about a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Trump, Cohen and the National Enquirer. executive David Pecker, who allegedly tried to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Prosecutors say the three men discussed publishing positive stories about the real estate mogul-turned-candidate and negative articles about his political opponents.
Prosecutors are expected to use that type of information to support their argument that Trump intended to improve his campaign’s image when he covered up the $130,000 payment to Daniels. That money allegedly kept her quiet during the campaign about a sexual encounter she says she had. with Trump 10 years earlier.
“The goal of the Trump Tower meeting was to control the flow of information reaching the electorate to accentuate the positive, obscure the negative, and exaggerate information that would be detrimental to Trump’s opponents,” Steinglass argued.
Blanche responded that the meeting was not part of any alleged criminal conduct and said that such sessions are common for candidates.
Although they lost that argument, Trump’s lawyers convinced Merchan that the jury should not be told about a series of women who came forward in late 2016 to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct in the wake of an “Access Hollywood” recording. ” in which he bragged about grabbing women. .
Merchan called those accusations “very, very damaging” and added that they are “just a rumor, just gossip, complete hearsay. Did it happen? There’s nothing to prove that. To me, allowing the accused to be prejudiced based only on a rumor.” It’s not fair.”
Steinglass had argued that his team should be allowed to mention, in general terms, those claims to the jury, to show how Trump reacted to them.
Trump “became almost obsessed with addressing these allegations,” the prosecutor said, because the candidate worried the stories would hurt him with female voters.
“This is really the key, specifically with female voters,” Steinglass argued.
Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this story.
