The court's dry rituals only made the proceedings more surreal, as New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan warned Trump that he could be removed or sent to jail if he disrupted the trial or failed to appear, and prosecutors said that they would try to detain Trump. contempt before a single potential juror had been questioned.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, openly disdained the trial as he spoke to reporters in the courthouse hallway at the end of the day. “We are not getting a fair trial,” he said, calling the prosecution a “fraud.”
Inside the courtroom, however, Trump was anything but disruptive. He often seemed bored or disinterested in the legal jousting that consumed the morning session, but was especially attentive once the jurors were questioned.
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 then caught himself abruptly and stiffened his posture.
That of the former president The most animated moments in the courtroom came when the judge was not on the bench. Trump chatted with his lawyers at the defense table, sometimes causing them to smile or laugh.
As hundreds of potential jurors waited on another floor of the courthouse, attorneys argued for hours Monday morning about what evidence should be shared with them, and a host of other legal issues, large and small.
It wasn't until mid-afternoon that the first class of 96 potential jurors entered the courtroom to begin the voir dire screening process. Almost immediately, half of them disappeared, having raised their hands when asked who could not be fair or impartial in a case involving Trump.
A prospective juror who stayed to be questioned said during that trial that 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, she said in her spare time loved singing, watching TV and 'going to the club'.
She was excused from jury duty after attorneys consulted with the judge. As she walked out, she told a court official, “I just couldn't do it.”
By the time the trial was adjourned at 4:30 p.m., only ten potential jurors had been interviewed. Proceedings will resume at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday as hundreds more people await their jury summons. Lawyers must agree on 12 jurors and a handful of alternates — a process that could take weeks.
Merchan tried to keep the high-profile case on an even keel, at one point urging prosecutors and defense attorneys to “sit down and relax” as he laid out the issues that had yet 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 on Trump's claims of immunity 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 graduation ceremony.
The former president has used the many criminal and civil lawsuits he faces as a rallying cry for his Republican base, successfully turning some of his courtroom appearances into campaign fodder. He is not required to attend the April 25 Supreme Court oral arguments in the immunity case, and was not present at a February oral argument in another case — on whether he could be barred from voting in Colorado — which also had the potential to reshape his position. candidacy.
Trump has repeatedly criticized Merchan for being biased against him and tried — without success — to remove the judge from the case.
On Monday, Merchan expressed displeasure with Trump over recent public statements attacking Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, a key witness in the case, after the judge issued a silence order explicitly banning such comments.
Prosecutors argued that Trump made three social media posts in the past two weeks that violated the judge's order. They fined him a total of $3,000. found in contempt and warned he could be sent to prison if he continues to make such comments.
When Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche responded that his client should be able to respond to political and public attacks from Cohen and others, Merchan asked the lawyer to indicate where in his gag order he had made such an exception. The judge will schedule a hearing on the case next week.
Trump's unique status as a defendant, who also happens to be a former and potential future president, came up frequently during the opening hours of the trial — the first of four Trump faces, and the only one not significantly delayed by pretrial and appeal. .
Criminal defendants, Merchan noted, have the right to participate in private interrogations of potential jurors, but if Trump were to do so, he would be joined by Secret Service agents, creating logistical hurdles for court officials.
Prosecutors have charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying company records — some of which they say was a criminal scheme to cover up Cohen's 2016 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels so she would keep quiet about her alleged tryst with Trump years earlier.
Cohen was reimbursed for these payments after Trump won the 2016 presidential election, but those payments were categorized as a legal retainer. Concealing the true purpose of the payments amounts to a criminal offense, prosecutors said.
In a case so closely tied to an alleged sexual relationship, attorneys spent much of Monday arguing about what a jury might hear about other alleged indiscretions in Trump's life.
Prosecutors wanted to tell the jury that he also had an affair with Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, at a time when his wife, Melania Trump, was pregnant with his child.
Blanche argued that this 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 prejudice is enormous,” Blanche said, “from salacious details about a completely different situation.”
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass argued that the details of the McDougal affair were important in showing Trump's state of mind and behavior as allegations of sexual impropriety surfaced against him.
The judge said the jury could be told about the affair, but not the additional details that Melania Trump was pregnant at the time. That detail, he said, was prejudicial, although he reserved the right to change his mind on it while other evidence is presented at trial.
Since the 1980s, Trump's fame and notoriety have been fueled in part by the tabloid press, and prosecutors have made it clear that they want to use that bad relationship against him to show that he made the hush money payment to prevent voters from learning about are embarrassing peccadilloes. .
Merchan agreed to allow prosecutors to tell the jury about a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Trump, Cohen and National Enquirer director David Pecker, who allegedly tried to help Trump's presidential campaign. Prosecutors say the three men discussed publishing positive stories about the real estate mogul-turned-candidate and negative stories about his political opponents.
Prosecutors are expected to use this type of information to support their argument that Trump wanted to improve his campaign image when he covered up the $130,000 payment to Daniels. That money would have kept her quiet during the campaign about a sexual encounter she said she had had with Trump ten years earlier.
“The entire purpose of the Trump Tower meeting was to control the flow of information reaching the electorate to accentuate the positive, hide the negative, and exaggerate information that would be damaging to Trump's opponents,” Steinglass argued.
Blanche countered that the meeting was not part of any criminal conduct charged, and said such sessions are common among candidates.
Although they lost that argument, Trump's lawyers convinced Merchan that jurors should not be told about a number 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 these accusations “very, very prejudicial,” adding that it is “just a rumor, just gossip, complete rumors.” Did it happen? There's nothing to prove that. It is not fair for me to allow the defendant to be prejudiced based solely on a rumor.”
Steinglass had argued that his team could state these claims in general terms to the jury, to show how Trump responded to them.
Trump “became almost obsessed with raising these allegations,” the prosecutor said, because the candidate feared the stories would hurt him when it came to female voters.
“This is really key, especially with female voters,” Steinglass argued.
Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.
