He leans back in his seat, head tilted slightly to the right. His eyes are closed. His chest rises and falls slowly.
In Manhattan Criminal Court, reporters aren’t sitting close enough to Donald Trump to know if he snores. But it looks like he’s dozing off.
The 77-year-old former president is fighting to stay awake while battling a 34-count criminal indictment filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors say he falsified business records by disguising secret payments to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, in order to silence her about an alleged affair.
On Tuesday morning, Trump closed his eyes for more than a minute at a time, at least a half-dozen times. His head will be straight, then tilted to one side.
It happened like, to his right, several rows of jurors answered questions about their fitness to serve on the jury.
Sometimes he opens his eyes and glances toward where the potential jurors are sitting. On other occasions, he seems to wake up with a start and stretches his arms out.
There are other moments when Trump seems relatively engaged, thumbing through a paper copy of the jury questionnaire and whispering to his lawyer Todd Blanche, seated next to him.
Trump is in it for the long haul: Jury selection is expected to last about two weeks, followed by another month of testimony and deliberations.
And Trump apparently doesn’t drink coffee, sticking to Diet Coke for his caffeine.
On Monday, the first day of jury selection, Trump also appeared to doze off at times, according to several reporters at the courthouse.
As he walked down the aisle of the courtroom Monday afternoon, Trump stopped to look at New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who said on CNN during the day’s lunch break that Trump seemed to fall asleep in court.
The courtroom on the 15th floor of downtown Manhattan is poorly controlled, and Trump — in a wool suit and tie tied around his neck — may have gotten hot Monday. Tuesday was a little cooler.
If Trump finds criminal proceedings a good time to take a nap, he’ll likely have more opportunities to catch some Z’s in the near future.
In addition to the charges against him in Manhattan, he faces three other criminal cases: in Georgia and Washington, D.C., for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and in even hotter Florida for hoarded government documents at Mar-a-Lago. .
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