Jury selection will continue — and could conclude — Friday in former President Donald Trump’s historic New York criminal trial.
With a full 12-person jury and one alternate juror sworn in Thursday, Judge Juan Merchan has called a pool of 96 potential jurors to his Manhattan courtroom in hope of finding five more alternate jurors for the first trial of a former president, which is expected to last roughly six weeks.
In addition to those 96 potential jurors, there are 22 left over from Thursday who will be questioned, as well.
If the effort to fill the jury box is successful, opening statements could take place as soon as Monday.
The main panel of 12 is made up of seven men and five women, including two lawyers, a teacher, a retired wealth manager, a product development manager, a security engineer, a software engineer, a speech therapist and a physical therapist. The foreman — the juror who essentially acts as the leader and spokesperson for the panel — is a married man who works in sales and gets his news from The New York Times, MSNBC and Fox News.
The lone alternate selected Thursday is a woman who works as an asset manager.
Also Friday, Merchan is expected to hold what’s known as a Sandoval hearing, a type of hearing designed to let defendants know the scope of questions they could face from prosecutors on cross-examination so they can make informed decisions about whether to take the witness stand in their own defense.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office disclosed in a court filing that it would like to ask Trump about several items, among them the $464 million civil judgment against him and his company for fraud, the total $88 million verdicts and liability findings for sexual abuse and defamation in lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll and a number of other adverse court rulings over the past few years.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all the cases and is appealing the fraud judgment and the Carroll verdicts.
Prosecutors said they want to be able to bring those findings up “to impeach the credibility of the defendant” if he takes the witness stand.
Trump said last week he “absolutely” plans to testify, but he is under no obligation to do so.
Trump’s attorneys told Merchan in a letter last month that they will argue the DA’s office should be barred “from asking about these items.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and faces up to four years in prison if he is convicted.
Bragg alleges that Trump falsified records to hide money he was paying his former lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse him for $130,000 he paid adult film actor Stormy Daniels near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels has claimed she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied that he slept with Daniels, but he has acknowledged repaying Cohen.
The DA’s office also alleges that as part of a scheme to boost Trump, National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc. paid $150,000 to model and actor Karen McDougal, who appeared in Playboy magazine and claimed that she had a nine-month affair with Trump before he was elected president “in exchange for her agreement not to speak out about the alleged sexual relationship,” according to a statement of facts filed by Bragg.
Trump has also denied having a sexual relationship with McDougal.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
