Breaking news now and
the former president's
criminal hush money trial in New York.
Appeals court judge today
denied his request to delay the trial,
which is scheduled to begin
one week from today.
That decision
only took the judge about 40 minutes
after arguments concluded.
And we're also learning
what prospective jurors will be asked.
Kara Scannell joins us now
with the details.
Well, I just got this questionnaire.
It's really fascinating.
What stands out to you?
Yeah, I mean,
there are the basic questions about
where do you live in the city?
What do you do?
Where do you get your news?
But they're also trying to dig in
and route out
whether there's any bias here
for or against Donald Trump.
And they do this.
So the vast number of questions
of have you ever worked for Trump,
his campaign, his administration,
have you ever attended
any rallies for Trump?
Have you attended
any rallies against Trump?
And they're also asking
if you belong to any fringe groups,
they say.
Q And on the Proud Boys, but also Antifa.
And one question they asked
I thought was interesting
and really specific to this case is
do you have any strong beliefs
about whether a former president
can be criminally charged in state court?
Because there are these questions
about immunity
and about whether, you know,
the politics of going
after a former president.
I mean, another thing
that is interesting here,
the judge made it clear
there will be no questions
about political contributions.
Who you voted for
or who you like,
because as the judge has said
and reminded the lawyers
in his jury questionnaire
that the issue here
is not to determine
whether someone likes Trump's
or doesn't like Trump,
but whether they can be
fair and impartial.
So as of now,
this trial is happening Monday.
Yeah,
this is a go for no
judge has ruled against Trump.
Yeah.
Trump's team went to the court today
asking them to delay the trial
so they can make
a motion to challenge the venue
because they say
New York has been saturated
with this story.
There has been the Carroll trial.
There's this a lot in the news.
And they did a poll of 400 New Yorkers
in which they say that a lot of people,
more than half
said that they thought
that Trump was guilty.
Now, the prosecution
opposed that, saying, you know,
there's nowhere
you can go to bring this case
where people don't know about it.
It's an international story
and they pushed back.
And the judge,
as you said, ruled pretty quickly
afterwards, denying this.
And, you know, will Trump's team
try to make another go at a
at the appeals court
and another issue,
you know, remains to be they they
the former president's team, had
they made some motion about Stormy
Daniels and a subpoena, What is that?
So they're still trying to enforce
some subpoenas that they issued
just last month.
One is the Stormy Daniels.
They want to know about
any communications
she's had about her documentary,
any communications she's had
was trial witnesses,
including Michael Cohen.
They've been on podcasts together.
And also,
if she's had communications,
what were they with
Jean Carroll
and two other women
who have accused Trump of sexual assault?
The reason that they argue they need
this is because they're suggesting
that there is some potential motive here
for Stormy Daniels
to give,
as they put it, false testimony
in order to profit off of this.
So they're trying to see
what they can learn.
I want to bring in two former
federal prosecutors,
Ellie Hoenig
and Jessica Roth, who's now a professor
at the Cardozo School of Law here
in New York.
I mean, the
jury questionnaire
does, as Carr says,
it talks about Proud Boys.
Q And on
Boogaloo Boys and Antifa documents.
So first of all, jury
selection is so crucial
when you're a prosecutor
or a defense lawyer,
the stakes are so high,
you let one bad juror through.
You're going to regret
that for a long time.
And what the judge in the court
is trying to do with this
document is suss out any undue biases.
And it really sort of breaks
into a couple of parts.
One of them is just basically the basics,
the biographical basics.
What type of job do you do?
What's your family situation?
But then it gets into
without quite asking,
how do you feel about Donald Trump?
Do you love him or hate him?
Asking a lot of proxies for that.
For example, where do you get your news?
Are you a member of any organizations?
And then, as Kara said,
have you been to a Trump rally?
Are you part of any Trump email list?
It also asks, Have you been a part of any
anti-Trump organization?
I don't know if Democrats
count as anti-Trump,
so there's a little bit
of interpretation here.
But what's going to happen
is the jurors will fill out
these questionnaires
and then it's sort of a guessing game.
As a lawyer,
you have a limited glimpse into a person
and based on their answers,
you have to surmise
which is person going to be good for me
or bad for me.
The whole case is at stake.
Private
client attorneys will often
have jury consultants
who sort of analyze jurors
just to the state, to cities.
I mean, the public prosecutors have that.
Well, very, very, very rarely.
I mean, it's just not generally done.
I don't have any insight into
whether they're doing that here.
But that would be very rare.
What is the difference?
I mean, they're
you know,
they're asking where
people get their news,
whether they've attended a Trump rally.
They're the judges,
you know, pointing out and saying,
you know,
there are no questions
asking prospective jurors
whom they voted for
or intend to vote for whom
they've made political contributions to.
What's the difference
if they're trying to get at it
this other way?
Yeah,
because what
the judge is trying to make clear
and what the judge is going to be trying
to make clear to the potential jurors
is that they're not being asked
their political views
and they're not being asked which party,
if any, they are affiliated.
They're sort of being asked.
But what
they're really trying to get asked,
can you be a fair and impartial juror
in this particular case?
Will you decide the case
based on the evidence
and the arguments presented in court
as opposed to
any bias that you bring in
that you wouldn't be able to put aside?
And this is just
the beginning of these questions,
because then there will be follow up
with jurors who say, for example, yes,
I've attended a rally. Right.
Then there would be the opportunity
for follow up questions
to try to get at
whether their attendance at such a rally
in some way indicates a bias
that would impair their ability
to be fair and impartial.
I'm just saying
you're going
to get a pretty good sense
of who these people are, right,
even without coming out and asking.
But imagine if someone says, I'm
a member of the NLRA.
I've attended a Trump rally
and I primarily watch Fox News.
Imagine if someone says
I'm a member of the ACLU.
I've donated to anti-Trump efforts
and I primarily watch MSNBC.
I mean,
there will be examples of
certainly the latter in Manhattan,
maybe the former.
So some jurors,
you can have a pretty clear view.
But then there's always
those jurors who are cagey
and you have to just
sort of use your instinct.
And I mean, are we there are seven days.
Is there a chance for a venue
change still?
I mean, at this point
before this judge today,
she made the ruling,
and that's the end of it at this
at this court, at this level.
I mean,
could he go to the higher court
of appeals?
It's a possibility that he could,
but there's going to be no more briefs
before this first level of appeal.
But if he went to the higher court,
that could
still change something
by next Monday in theory.
But he doesn't have a
right to have them here.
This appeal,
it would be discretionary on their part,
whether they would take it
and honestly,
on the merits, it's
so weak that I have a hard time
imagining that they would consider it.
Yeah, he's going to lose on venue.
How long do you think jury
selection is going to take?
So the estimates that we've heard
are a week or more.
But remember,
they're going to have to go
through each of these individually.
I mean, you have to winnow down
hundreds of people down to 12,
I would guess, over a week,
maybe just over a week.
It takes longer in state court
than federal court.
It's also important to know
in federal court,
we used to pick juries in a day,
two days.
I mean, this is an extraordinary case
for all the reasons we're familiar with.
One thing I noted in the cover
letter that the judge attached
to the jury questionnaire was he,
if I read it correctly,
he's saying to the lawyers
for four jurors who say, basically
I have a reason
I cannot serve in this case,
that he's going to essentially
excuse them at that point
without doing further inquiry,
because that will really cut
in, cut down
the time that will speed it up.
And that was a point of contention
at one of the hearings.
Trump's team
initially wanted to poll
everyone individually,
and they
they had started to do that in the Trump
Organization tax fraud trial
a couple years ago
and midway through changed their decision
because it was taking too long.
So that seemed to me
they were looking to speed it up
that way.
You know,
the Trump Organization trial
took about a week
to seat the jury
that Eugene Carroll,
which was federal court, took one day.
I think the estimate for
this is one week.
You know,
and they're only needing four days
that person and has
the court has the president's
former president's
legal team
given a sense of
what their defense is here?
I think the main defense
is attacking the credibility
of some of these witnesses.
Michael Cohen,
he is the one person that can testify
about the conversation
he had with Donald Trump
in the Oval Office
about the reimbursement.
You know,
we're not going to hear
from Allen Weisselberg,
who was part of that.
We will hear from some other Trump
Organization executives.
But I think connecting
Trump to the falsification
is where they're probably
going to focus a lot
and try to distance Trump.
It's tough, though, to go
after the credibility of Michael Cohen.
I mean, there's plenty of reasons to go
after the credibility of Michael Cohen.
But when Donald Trump had him
as his right hand man for eons,
that will be exactly the argument, right?
He trusted them back then.
And it's really important to keep in mind
the crime here is not hush money.
It's not a crime to pay hush money.
It's falsification.
Can they tie Donald Trump
to the logging of those payments
as legal fees?
And if specifically, the state is
is arguing
that the reason it was
illegal was because this was an unlawful,
undisclosed campaign donation.
Trump is going to argue no,
it was to protect my marriage.
That's why I paid her the money.
And I imagine that
that might be
some of the focus of the defense as well.
The trial.
I just go out.
Thanks so much, Alyona,
with Kara Scannell.