Juror who withdrew was targeted by Fox News host
Sam Levine
The juror who withdrew was targeted by Jesse Watters, the Fox News host, on Tuesday evening.
Watters said on his show:
I’m not so sure about juror No. 2.
Watters spoke directly about the juror during his show and questioned whether she could really be fair.
The juror told Justice Juan Merchan on Thursday she had been contacted by friends and family asking if she was a juror.
Key events
From the current panel of 96 prospective jurors, 48 were excused after saying they could not be fair and impartial in the case, per pool.
Another nine were excused for other reasons without explanation.
Juror who withdrew was targeted by Fox News host
Sam Levine
The juror who withdrew was targeted by Jesse Watters, the Fox News host, on Tuesday evening.
Watters said on his show:
I’m not so sure about juror No. 2.
Watters spoke directly about the juror during his show and questioned whether she could really be fair.
The juror told Justice Juan Merchan on Thursday she had been contacted by friends and family asking if she was a juror.
Trump lawyers ask judge to force Stormy Daniels to comply with subpoena
Donald Trump’s lawyers are asking Judge Juan Merchan to force Stormy Daniels to comply with the subpoena. In their filing, they included a photo they said process server Dominic DellaPorte took of Daniels as she strode away.
Daniels’s lawyer Clark Brewster claims they never received the paperwork. He described the requests as an “unwarranted fishing expedition” with no relevance to Trump’s criminal trial. Brewster wrote in a 9 April letter to Merchan:
The process – instituted on the eve of trial – appears calculated to cause harassment and/or intimidation of a lay witness.
Daniels is expected to testify about a $130,000 payment she got in 2016 from one of Trump’s lawyers at the time, Michael Cohen, in order to stop her from speaking publicly about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump years earlier.
Donald Trump’s legal team has said it tried serving Stormy Daniels a subpoena as she arrived for an event at a bar in Brooklyn last month, but the adult movie actor, who is expected to be a witness at the former president’s criminal trial, refused to take it and walked away.
A process server working for Trump’s lawyers said he approached Daniels with papers demanding information related to a documentary recently released about her life and involvement with Trump, but was forced to “leave them at her feet”, according to a court filing made public on Wednesday.
“I stated she was served as I identified her and explained to her what the documents were,” process server Dominic DellaPorte wrote.
She did not acknowledge me and kept walking inside the venue, and she had no expression on her face.
A new panel of potential jurors have entered the courtroom. Some of the jurors look surprised to see Donald Trump at the defense table, per pool.
Judge Merchan addresses the new batch of potential jurors, and introduces the lawyers on each side as well as the defendant, Trump.
According to pool reports, Trump does not stand up to face the potential jurors seated in the audience when he is introduced, unlike his legal team.
Prosecutors say Trump has violated gag order seven times
Prosecutors are submitting another order to show cause, saying that Donald Trump has violated the gag order seven more times, starting on Monday.
Trump’s new posts came after prosecutors initially sought a $3,000 fine on Monday for three other Truth Social posts.
One links to a NYPost article calling Michael Cohen a “serial perjurer” and the case “an embarrassment for the New York legal system, per pool.
Prosecutor Chris Conroy also notes “the most disturbing post” that Trump posted on social media quoting Jesse Watters on Fox News that they are “catching undercover liberal activists lying to the judge” in order to get on the jury. “It’s ridiculous and has to stop,” Conroy says.
The defense argues that reporting statements from others should not violate the gag order.
Judge Merchan does not make an immediate ruling, saying he will wait for a hearing on the prosecution’s request for contempt sanctions over Trump’s posts scheduled for 23 April.
Judge Merchan, in directing the press not to use physical descriptors to describe jurors, complained specifically about mentioning one of the jurors had an Irish accent.
“We just lost” what would have been a good juror for the case, Merchan said, after one of the jurors was excused after she told the court that she had concerns about her ability to be impartial. Merchan added:
She said she was afraid and intimidated by the press, all the press.
The judge ruled that the media can no longer report on jurors’ answers to question 3a and 3d of the questionnaire.
Questions 3a and 3d ask: Who is your current employer and who is your previous employer?
Sam Levine
Judge Merchan just admonished the press for using physical descriptors to describe jurors. He said:
I would recommend the press simply apply common sense and refrain from anything that has to do, for example, with physical descriptions. It’s just not necessary, it serves no purpose.
He said that if the press continues to write about physical descriptors, he is willing to take additional steps to conceal the identities of jurors.
Juror excused after concerns over aspects of identity made public
Judge Merchan says Juror 2 contacted the court and said she had concerns about her ability to be fair and impartial. This is the oncology nurse from the Upper East Side.
Speaking in court, she says she “definitely has concerns now” about what has been reported about her publicly.
She says she had friends, colleagues and family conveying to her that she had been identified as a potential juror.
Judge Juan Merchan has taken the bench, and court is now in session.
Seven jurors have been selected so far. They include an information technology worker, an English teacher, an oncology nurse, a sales professional, a software engineer and two lawyers.
Five more jurors and six alternates remain to be chosen.
Trump takes his seat in the courtroom
Sam Levine
Donald Trump has taken his seat at the defense table in Manhattan criminal court for day three of the criminal hush money trial against him.
He is talking on his cell phone.
Donald Trump’s motorcade arrived at the Manhattan courthouse shortly before 9am ET, and jury selection is expected to resume at about 9.30am.
Trump and his lawyers have entered the courtroom, as have prosecutors including Susan Hoffinger, Joshua Steinglass, and Matthew Colangelo.
There have been some surreal scenes in the jury selection process so far, where potential jurors have had to explain how they feel about Donald Trump as he sits in front of them and listens.
Here’s a look at how ordinary New Yorkers have responded as they were asked their thoughts on the former president.
Sam Levine
Good morning from the overflow room in the Manhattan criminal court building in lower Manhattan.
We’re about to kick off day three of jury selection in Donald Trump’s criminal trial over his efforts to conceal hush money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. Seven jurors have been picked so far. Five more regular jurors and six alternates still need to be selected.
It’s been a rainy quiet morning here at the courthouse. There wasn’t much activity in the park across the street.
Trump, meanwhile, continues to push the envelope with a gag order that prohibits him from attacking jurors. Last night, he reposted a quote from the Fox News host Jesse Waters suggesting that undercover liberal activists were trying to get on the jury.
Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the trial, has already warned Trump once about threatening jurors. We’ll see if the judge brings it up this morning.
Trump hush-money trial resumes for third day of jury selection
Good morning US politics readers. Donald Trump is due to return to Manhattan court this morning as the process continues in the jury selection for the former president’s historic trial and one of the most high-profile criminal cases in US history.
So far, seven people have been selected after two days of intense grilling by prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers that has sifted through prospective jurors’ political views, personal lives and social media posts to decide who gets to sit in judgment over Trump just months before his upcoming rematch with Joe Biden in the November general election.
Five more jurors and six alternates remain to be chosen. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of the alleged effort to cover up hush money paid to adult actor Stormy Daniels. Trump also faces other trials involving his actions on January 6, attempts to subvert the 2020 election in Georgia and charges related to his keeping of classified documents at his resort in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, after he had left office.
Trump’s criminal hush-money trial: what to know
Here’s what else we’re watching:
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Joe Biden is traveling to Philadelphia, where he is scheduled to participate in a number of campaign events before returning to the White House
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Biden is expected to receive the formal endorsement of a large contingent of the Kennedy family who have shunned independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr, the Biden campaign has said.
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Kamala Harris will take part in a conversation about gun violence prevention ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Columbine shooting.
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10am ET. Alejandro Mayorkas, the US secretary of homeland security, will testify before the homeland security and governmental affairs committee.
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12pm. The Senate will meet to take up the motion to proceed to the Fisa section 702 reauthorization, with a cloture vote at 1pm.