Trump's Trials - Here's what you need to know about the first week of Trump's hush money trial

Episode Date: April 20, 2024

For this episode of Trump's Trials, NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro speaks with NPR political reporter Ximena Bustillo and University of Baltimore law professor Kim Wehle.The first week of former President Donald Trump's hush money trial is in the books and a jury has now been seated. Each potential juror had to answer dozens of questions and prove they could remain fair and impartial when weighing the fate of the former president, who watched the selection process from his seat in the courtroom. Now seated, the jury will hear opening arguments in the trial beginning on Monday.Topics include:- What we know and can safely say about the jurors selected- Safety concerns and security measures for jurors' protection- Predictions for each side's case in Monday's opening argumentsFollow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for new episodes each Saturday.Sign up for sponsor-free episodes and support NPR's political journalism at plus.npr.org/trumpstrials.Email the show at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

A jury of 12 New Yorkers has been seated. Opening arguments begin Monday. We love Trump! This is a persecution. He actually just stormed out of the courtroom. We love him! Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. From NPR, this is Trump's Trials.

I'm Domenico Montanaro. Scott Detro is away. The first week of former President Donald Trump's hush money trial is in the books. The week focused on jury selection, combing through hundreds of potential jurors looking for just 12 plus 6 alternates to decide Trump's fate. It's a tedious process, asking each potential juror 42 questions, assessing if they're being honest and if they can really be fair and impartial. The 12 come from all over Manhattan, seven men, five women,

some are married, some are not, some get their news from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and TikTok. Some listen to podcasts, one enjoys car talk, thanks Juror Number 7, but all agree that they can be fair and impartial despite any negative feelings they may have for Trump. We're gonna dive into everything we know

and can safely say about these jurors and everything that happened in the courtroom. That's when we come back. In this country, more than two local newspapers are closing down each week. As news deserts grow, public radio is a lifeline for staying informed. Keep that service strong with a donation to the NPR network at donate.npr.org and thank you. These days news comes at you fast but the truth getting there takes time. There's something that hasn't been disclosed yet. Embedded is a podcast

that takes the time to look beyond the headlines. How did this happen? How did we get here? With original documentary storytelling. Listen to NPR's Embedded wherever you get your podcasts. Over the past couple decades, the U.S. has lost about a third of its newspapers, taking thousands of local journalists off their beats. A functioning democracy and functioning local journalism go hand in hand.

We're trying to do our part, and that's why we need you to do your part. Make sure that the NPR network stays strong by supporting us at donate.npr.org. And thank you. And we're back with University of Baltimore law professor Kim Whaley and NPR political reporter Jimena Bustillo Who's been reporting from that Manhattan courtroom all week? Welcome to you both. Hey there great to be here So Jimena, let's start with you. You were there all week. Give us some of the color. What was it like? Well, it was just a very interesting scene to bring in truly everyday

New Yorkers at random and have them come face to face with the former president who is not a random person. Of course, the prospective jurors do recognize him. At one point, the judge did ask one gal to put her phone away. It seemed like maybe she was going to try and take a picture or at least use her phone, which in the courtroom, folks were not allowed to. And there were serious moments as well as jurors were questioned about their personal lives, about their criminal history, about their family traumas in front of the former president. But they were also questioned in lighter tones about their hobbies and how they spend their

time and where they grew up. Each question was aimed to suss out if they could be fair and impartial at the end of the day. Jimena, you know, it took just a week for the jury to be seated. Tell us kind of how that happened and what you can maybe tell us a little bit about the people who were selected for the jury.

And just to note for our listeners, we're not gonna identify, you know, specific identifying characteristics of many of these jurors out of safety for the jurors, as the judges instructed. Mm-hmm. Right. In total, about 300 people came through, and most self-eliminated, when they were first

asked if they could be fair or impartial, they raised their hands to indicate they could not, and the judge was like, okay, you can go. And major swaths were lost in that way. Then they kind of went over a really lengthy questionnaire that asked, you know, kind of all these personal questions I talked about earlier, where they live, where they work, what their hobbies are, and then some more pointed ones. If they've attended a Trump rally or if they've attended a quote anti-Trump rally or if they have opinions on campaign finance law.

Sometimes the jurors would actually self-select out or disclose information that could disqualify them. Once said that he had a relative that was a court officer in that room right now, which garnered some laughter. Another said that they had worked with a child of one of the potential witnesses and that juror eventually self-selected out as well. There were some that came back and said that after not being able to sleep, they realized that they couldn't do it. Some were kind of tearful as they admitted that they were stressed and nervous in the whole situation

and that they kind of came to the point that they couldn't be fair and impartial. But the jurors that were ultimately selected, I mean, they come from all over Manhattan and they have wide ranging hobbies. They talked about woodworking, a lot of outdoorsy people on this jury as well. But when it comes to Trump, some of them said they didn't know anything about the other like 50 charges that the former president is facing across the country. Some said that they were not familiar at all. Some said that they were aware of them, but that's about as far as it went. And others had opportunity to share more feelings about Trump, share that they thought he was selfish, share that they thought that they didn't like his policies, but just

because they didn't like his policies didn't mean that they couldn't be objective about the law. Kim, you know, what about this jury stood out to you? Anything that stood out to you that you kind of thought about? I mean, this went so quickly. We thought it might take two weeks. It wound up taking a week with opening arguments now coming up on Monday. What really stood out to you about the makeup of this jury and the timing of how quickly it went? Well, I think as was indicated, these jurors have to think about not just whether they

can be impartial with respect to this particular defendant. There have been other high profile cases that people see in the news. It's not disqualifying to have knowledge of the defendant, but their safety. This is unprecedented. This is historic. This has massive implications for the election. There are lots of people that follow Donald Trump who could do these people harm. So I think that's just weighing on these folks. The other thing I think that struck me was

that there are lawyers on the jury. My first year in law school, one of my professors said, look around, you'll never be on a jury because now you've had a day of law school and you'll be considered too influential. So I think that's kind of interesting because this is a complex theory. The case is not so straightforward, you know, A to B. It is basically a charge inside a charge, the argument being 34 counts of falsifying records in order to cover up campaign violations, finance violations, the idea to cover up a hush money payment made to basically get him elected. There's some needles that need to be threaded there and it's interesting now there are

people with law degrees that can can help the others kind of understand the complexities of the charges. Jimena, you know, I was kind of struck just thinking about how close these jurors were to Donald Trump. I mean, the first former president to stand for a criminal trial. What was that dynamic like? Was the tension sort of clear? I know some of the jurors even sort of made comment about that or some of the jurors who

even were dismissed talked about it. I think it was just a very particular dynamic, especially in some settings where jurors had to read old social media posts or be confronted with old social media posts that they had made specifically about the former president. Sometimes they would be called back in one by one for individual questioning, which still happened in front of the former president.

And they would have to read an answer to pretty disparaging posts that they'd written about him. And that's something that Trump had to sit there and listen to. And like I mentioned earlier, sometimes they were asked, the prosecuting team made sure to ask individual jurors, not just what their opinions were on Trump, but what their feelings were on Trump. And that was aimed to kind of pull out abstract descriptors of, you know, how they actually feel about the former president. Then again, this is all this is all happening in front of him. So everyone is feeling these moments of, I think, vulnerability. Jared Sussman Kim, if you're the Trump team, are you happy

with this jury that gets elected? I mean, I was, I felt a kind of hopeful moment when I heard one man say, I might feel a certain way, but feelings aren't facts. And I was like, man, if we could evangelize that to people, right? Well, there were certainly people that were not dismissed who shared that they didn't have, you know, high regard for some of how the former president has engaged. So, you know, when you're sitting in the in that process, you can tailor your answers if you have a desire to be on a jury, right? It's impossible to get inside someone's mind and really get a sense of whether there's a bias there. And in a way, the jury system asks something artificial of the process.

We know just in being human, it's impossible sometimes to set aside feelings. That being said, they each had 10 peremptory challenges and you got to use those wisely and presumably, you know, use them to get the really, really egregious people in their mind off the jury. That being said, you know, this is if we ever see the trial in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, go forward, it's going to be a very different pool. So you had hundreds of people come through, you know, you had many anyway saying that they do think that they can be impartial. Do you think the former president's going to get a fair trial here?

He's certainly complained that he feels like he can't. You know, I think part of his sort of public media sort of campaign is to suggest that the system of justice is corrupt and against him. And it's really as a, you know, as a, again, a teacher of law, I think it's just tragic that that's kind of taken hold to some degree. There are so many protections in place for a criminal defendant like Donald Trump.

First of all, he has a team of really good lawyers. Most people in the criminal justice system don't have that. And he has it. And of course, there are the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth Amendment. There are constitutional protections. And there's a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. There are appeals.

So he's protected like most people are not. So I absolutely think he will get a fair trial. And the jury system, on the one hand, there's flaws. But on the other, it's kind of inherently democratic in a way. Other things aren't in our system. That is, these are regular people who the power of the law is put in their hands. It's not elected officials. It's not judges.

It's not prosecutors. It's regular folks, Manhattanites that live in the community that really Donald Trump hails from. And in a way, that's a very humbling process. And I think that's something it's bracing to watch how he's being brought to kind of the regular people for some assessment and accountability in this moment. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know, Jimena, Kim talks about protections in place for Trump legally. We also have to talk about the safety of the jurors a little bit.

And the judge really sort of weighed in pretty heavily on trying to protect some of these jurors, because some potential jurors who would have been selected or were selected kind of came back and said that they felt that they had been identified. How much of a big deal is this as the safety, the protection of these jurors and what Judge Marchand was saying about it? I mean, it is a really big deal. Like, this is supposed to be an anonymous jury in big part for the safety of the jurors. And there was one juror that came back on Thursday,

and she said that there was just too much identifiable information about her. Now in media reports that several family members and friends had sent her several reports kind of pointing that out. And just that fact alone that she could be identified or was already identified made her not be able to be fair and impartial because now people knew that she was on the jury. I will also note that there are a lot of pretty strict rules on press inside of the courthouse.

So I stood in a hallway area, like a little pen outside of the courtroom for the first two days, you know, kind of designed to wait for Trump to come in and out. And every time they had the jurors come like hundreds of them, right, like from the jury room to the courtroom, we had to like the TV cameras had to be covered, they had to be pointed at the wall or completely taken off. Folks with audio equipment had to basically like drop their equipment on the floor. I had to be very careful to not angle my phone in a way that looked like I may be taking a photo or a video. And at one point, there was

pretty identifiable information that was, for the most part, public record, place of employment, like your actual current employer and your former employer. And it doesn't take too long to find someone when you know their current and last place of work. And so Judge Mershon has asked for that to be redacted in transcripts after the fact. And he just has asked courtesy of the press to be mindful when talking about these jurors

to not use descriptors that could completely identify one person or another. Yeah, this is certainly an unprecedented thing. We use that word so many times over the last nine years with Donald Trump. But juries always are anxiety producing if you serve on one. I mean, a criminal trial, you could be judging the fate of murderers, mob bosses, drug kingpins. I mean, Kim, this is a pretty big deal serving on a jury. How do courts generally try to and can they ensure the safety of juries? Kim K. Fletcher, Ph.D. Well, in a lot of criminal trials, there isn't really this level of danger

for juries, right? If you have sort of a racketeering case involving organized crime, that's the kind of thing. You might see this kind of lockdown. And the concern isn't, frankly, the press. The concern is the former president of the United States and presumptive Republican nominee for president in this upcoming election. That's a stunning fact, right?

And even Judge Merchant had discussions with his counsel because the government's position is that there's already been violations by Donald Trump of the gag order that was imposed, sort of tweeting tweets of other people making comments about, say, Michael Cohen or Stormy Daniels. And the judge seemed skeptical that the lawyer, Donald Trump's counsel, Todd Blanch, could actually manage his client. We've seen this former

president threaten people within the courthouse, the judge's clerks, things like that. That's not something you can turn around that has elevated the danger to these public servants. These jurors are heroes, really. And I just really have to hope that what's being imposed here is going to make sure that these jurors, not just during the trial, but after the trial, can go on to live their lives in safety. Well, and Trump is on true social complaining about the gag order. Again, he was talking about the judge saying that he was railroading him with this breakneck speed that this case is proceeding at, which is sort of par for the course for Trump. But you wonder, Jimena, he's sitting there in the courtroom,

he has to be completely silent. What observations did you have that stood out to you when it came to how he was conducting himself? Yeah, well, every day was a little bit different. There were some days where he just sat there and appeared to close his eyes. You know, some reporters were wondering if he was maybe sleeping or, or just like in deep thought. All right. Was he sleeping? Do we have to talk? I mean, like, what was Donald Trump asleep? You know, from the overflow room, you know, I wouldn't know, but, you know, he would close his eyes. He'd have them closed for a little bit of time.

It could have been sleeping, it could have been deep thought. He'd look down at the table a lot. He was just kind of hunched down and kind of into himself. But other days he was more attentive and watching the jurors almost the whole time as they answered their questions. One thing that I will point out is he wasn't very talkative. So in past New York trials, he's been speaking to the press all day.

So before and after every break in the morning when he comes in, midday break, lunch, afternoon break, end of day. So that's, you know, at least eight times that he is talking to the press. And you know, this week, he didn't really do that. I think there were a couple days where he did talk in the morning and then a few days maybe where he talked at the end of the day.

But throughout the day he would just go in and out, in and out, maybe do a thumbs up, maybe do a fist, maybe do a wave, but that was about it. All right, well, looking ahead to next week, Kim, on Monday, we're expected to see opening arguments much faster than we thought that we would. What should we expect there? Well, first of all, we know the judge is going to rule on the question of what kind of prior

bad acts or prior convictions, frankly, or jury in the in the E. Jean Carroll case the judges civil fraud determination whether those things can be used on cross-examination if Donald Trump decides to testify that you know There's a balancing there between fairness to him that he's not his character Is it unfairly impugned and the government's argument that these things bear on his credibility. It's called a Sandoval hearing under this New York law. So we'll find that out. And then I think, you know, we will hear obviously the opening statements and they will lay out the story and make the case that this matters, make the case that this is something that

rises to the level that could deprive someone, that is the criminal defendant here, of his liberty. Each of these counts carries up to four years in prison. And that's a tall order. And it's a grave responsibility on their part. For the defense, they're going to have to lay out how they're going to poke holes in the government's case. I think they will suggest,

and they will go after Michael Cohen as somebody who cannot be trusted, try to create doubt about whether Donald Trump was involved in this. And remember, all they need is one juror to agree with their side or to have enough doubt that they're just not willing to join everyone else and convict.

So in any criminal trial, this is another mechanism by which fairness is imposed. Really, the burden of proof is on the government. Yeah, I mean, and I think that the politics of this is really interesting because we're talking about a trial that is happening inside a courtroom, you know, until maybe the end of May, early June, but there's also the trial outside the courtroom. And I know that Donald Trump was, you know, you kind of uses each of these as campaign events almost, where he'll talk about what's happening, what's going on. But I think that beyond that, we're going to have Donald Trump's behavior really sort of under the spotlight. And that means that he's not talking about

immigration or inflation, which are the things he'd much rather be focusing on. Well, and he's not focusing on attacking Biden either. Right. The spotlight's on him. And there have been polls that suggest that if there's a conviction in any of these cases, it could have an impact. I mean, just bear in mind that in some states,

if you have a felony conviction, you can't vote. So it really does change his status under the law. That doesn't impact the election. But there is a difference between, oh, Donald Trump is being unfairly attacked by the government and, oh, 12 regular people found beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed crimes that are felonies that potentially could carry jail time. Those are two different things. And Florida, where he lives at Mar-a-Lago, is one of those states where he wouldn't be allowed to vote even though he could be elected president. Jimena, this week coming up, Supreme Court is supposed to hear the immunity case for

Trump. Give us briefly what that's about. So the Supreme Court justices will be hearing arguments on Thursday on if Trump's bid for presidential immunity is valid and will go through. The question that they have is whether or not Trump can be tried for criminal charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And the court's answer may have some implications for parts of trials in other states as well. Well, we're going to be watching it all and be back to talk to you about it. Thank you so much, Kim Whaley, Jimena Bustillo. Thanks for joining.

Thank you. Great to be with you. We'll be back next week with another episode of Trump's Trials. And thanks to our supporters who hear the show sponsor free. If that's not you, it could be sign up at plus.npr.org or subscribe on our show page in Apple podcasts. The show is produced by Tyler Bartlem and Elena Burnett and edited by Adam Rainey, Christian Dev Kalamer and Steve Drummond. Our executive producers are Beth Donovan and Sam Yenigan. Eric Marapotti is NPR's vice president of news programming. I'm Domenico Montanaro. Thanks for listening to Trump's Trials from NPR.

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