By Michael R. Sisak, Jennifer Peltz, Jake Offenhartz and Alanna Durkin Richer, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump will return to a New York courtroom Tuesday as a judge works to find a panel of jurors who will decide whether the former president is guilty of criminal charges alleging he falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal during the 2016 campaign.
The first day of Trump’s historic trial in Manhattan ended with no one yet chosen to serve on the jury of 12 jurors and six alternates. Dozens of people have been dismissed after saying they didn’t think they could be fair, although dozens of other potential jurors have yet to be interviewed.
It is the first of four Trump criminal cases to go to trial and could be the only one that could reach a verdict before voters decide in November whether the presumptive Republican presidential nominee should return to the White House. That puts Trump’s legal troubles at the center of the hotly contested race against President Joe Biden, with Trump portraying himself as the victim of a politically motivated justice system working to deprive him of another term.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in an alleged effort to prevent salacious — and, he says, false — stories about his sex life from coming to light during his 2016 campaign. On Monday, Trump called the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg a “scam” and a “witch hunt.”
The charges relate to $130,000 in payments Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen. He paid this sum on Trump’s behalf to prevent pornographic actress Stormy Daniels from going public with her allegations of a sexual relationship with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the sexual encounter ever occurred.
Prosecutors say the payments to Cohen were falsely recorded as legal fees. Prosecutors described it as part of a plan to bury damaging stories that Trump feared could help his opponent in the 2016 race, especially as Trump’s reputation was suffering at the time comments he made about women.
Trump acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for the payment and that it was intended to prevent Daniels from going public with the alleged encounter. But Trump has already said it had nothing to do with the campaign.
Jury selection could take several more days, if not weeks, in the heavily Democratic city where Trump grew up and catapulted to stardom decades before winning the White House.
Only about a third of the 96 people making up the first panel of potential jurors brought into the courtroom Monday remained after the judge excused some members. More than half the group was excused after telling the judge they could not be fair and impartial and several others were fired for other reasons that were not revealed. Another group of more than 100 potential jurors sent to the courthouse Monday have yet to be brought into the courtroom for questioning.
Richer reported from Washington.
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