NEW YORK (AP) — In an extraordinary moment in American history, former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial begins Monday with jury selection.
This is the first criminal trial against a former commander-in-chief and the first Trump’s four charges to go to court. With Trump as the presumptive nominee for this year’s Republican nomination, the process will also produce the stunning split screen of a presidential candidate spending his days in court and, as he put it, “campaigning at night.”
What you need to know about Trump’s hush money trial:
And to some extent, it is a trial against the justice system itself, as it battles a defendant who has used his enormous notoriety to attack the judge, his daughteron district attorneysome witnesses and the charges – while blasting the legitimacy of a legal structure he insists has been usurped by his political opponents.
Against this background, dozens of ordinary citizens are to be summoned on Monday to a cave-like room in a utilitarian court to determine whether they can serve, fairly and impartially, on a jury.
“The ultimate question is whether prospective jurors can assure us that they will put aside any personal feelings or biases and reach a decision that is based on the evidence and the law,” Judge Juan M. Murchan wrote in an April 8 document.
The first of four criminal trials against Donald Trump will begin in New York on April 15. Here are some of the key figures in the case. (AP Video: Ted Shaffrey)
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 crimes to falsify business records such as part of an alleged effort to prevent salacious — and, he says, false — stories about his sex life from getting out during his 2016 campaign.
The allegations center on $130,000 in payments Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen. He paid that amount on Trump’s behalf to prevent porn actress Stormy Daniels from going public, a month before the election, with her allegations of having sex with the married mogul a decade earlier.
Prosecutors say the payments to Cohen were falsely registered as legal fees to disguise their true purpose. Trump’s lawyers say the payments were really legal fees, not a cover.
Trump himself has portrayed the case and his other indictments elsewhere as a broad “arming of law enforcement” by Democratic prosecutors and officials. He claims they are staging trumped-up charges in hopes of derailing his presidential bid.
After decades of running and launching lawsuits, the businessman-turned-politician now faces a trial that could lead to four years in prison if convicted, although a sentence without jail is possible.
Regardless of the eventual outcome, the trial of a former president and current candidate is a moment of extreme weight for the American political system, as well as for Trump himself. Such a scenario would once have seemed unthinkable to many Americans, even for a president whose tenure left a trail of broken norms, including twice impeached and acquitted by the Senate.
The scene in the courtroom can be met with a spectacle from outside. When Trump went on trial last year, the police small skirmishes broke out between his supporters and protesters near the courthouse in a small park where a local Republican group plans a rally in support of Trump on Monday.
Trump’s lawyers lost an attempt to drop the hush money lawsuit and have since repeatedly tried to delay it, prompting a flurry of last-minute appeals court hearings last week.
Among other things, Trump’s lawyers argued that the jury in overwhelmingly Democratic Manhattan was tainted by negative publicity about Trump and that the case should be moved elsewhere.
Appellate Judge declined an urgent request to delay the trial while the change-of-venue request goes to a panel of appeals judges who are scheduled to consider it in the coming weeks.
Manhattan prosecutors countered that much of the publicity stemmed from Trump’s own comments and that the questioning would determine whether prospective jurors can put aside any biases they may have. Prosecutors said there was no reason to believe 12 honest and impartial people could not be found among Manhattan’s roughly 1.4 million elderly residents.
The selection process for those 12, plus six alternates, will begin with dozens of people gathering in Murchan’s courtroom. They will only know each other by number, as he does ordered their names to be kept secret by everyone except the prosecutors, Trump and their legal teams.
After hearing some basics about the case and the jury, prospective jurors will be asked to raise their hands if they feel they cannot serve or be fair and impartial. Those who do will be excused, according to Merchan’s filing last week.
The rest will be subject to questioning. The 42 pre-approved, sometimes multifaceted, submissions include basic essentials but also reflect the uniqueness of the case.
“Do you have a strong opinion or strongly held belief about former President Donald Trump or the fact that he is a current candidate for president that would interfere with your ability to be a fair and impartial juror?” one question asks.
Others ask about Trump’s attendance or anti-Trump rallies, opinions about how he was treated in the case, news sources and more — including any “political, moral, intellectual or religious beliefs or opinions” that could “bias ” the future juror’s approach to the case.
Based on the answers, attorneys can ask a judge to eliminate people “for cause” if they meet certain criteria for being unable to serve or being impartial. Attorneys can also use “peremptory challenges” to remove 10 potential jurors and two prospective alternates without giving a reason.
“If you’re going to hit everybody who’s either a Republican or a Democrat,” the judge noted at a February hearing, “you’re going to run out of peremptory challenges very quickly.”
