The process of picking a jury is a critical phase of any criminal trial but especially so when the defendant is a former president and the presumptive Republican nominee.
Prospective jurors have been grilled on their social media posts, personal lives and political views as the lawyers and judge search for biases that would prevent them from being impartial. Inside the court, there’s broad acknowledgment of the futility in trying to find jurors without knowledge of Trump, with a prosecutor this week saying that lawyers were not looking for people who had been “living under a rock for the past eight years.”
To that end, at least some of the jurors selected acknowledged having their own opinions about Trump.
“I find him fascinating and mysterious,” one juror selected for the case, an IT professional, said under questioning. “He walks into a room and he sets people off, one way or the other. I find that really interesting. ‘Really? This one guy could do all of this? Wow.’ That’s what I think.”
▶ Read more about how jury selection works.
