Two Seated Jurors Removed in Trump Hush-money Case

Trump’s hush-money case in New York got started this week with jury selection.

Most of us thought this would be a bit challenging from the start in trying to find a total of 18 people who were unbiased either way in the case.

It turns out that two people who were picked have since been dismissed from serving on the jury.

Remove Them

Day one of just selection saw more than half of the jury pool dismissed because they had admitted they could not be unbiased or had commitments in place that would not allow them to sit on the jury for what could be a two-month trial.

By day two, they had about half the jury in place but needed to continue to find the remaining half plus the six alternate jurors.

By Thursday afternoon, the 12 jurors had been seated, but not before two seated jurors were dismissed from the case.

One juror was dismissed for possibly lying about previous arrests. The second juror left over concerns regarding “outside influences” not affecting her “thinking in the courtroom.”

This came about after reporting that described the woman; her friends, and family had reached out to her believing that she was the person described.

Judge Juan Merchan was not at all pleased that she was removed from the case, stating, "We just lost what probably would have been a very good juror.”

Fox News’ Jesse Watters then reported, “They are catching undercover liberal activists lying to the judge in order to get on the Trump jury,” a claim that was not substantiated by anything I have read regarding the juror removals.

This process does show, however, how difficult it is to find 18 people who are unbiased either way.

As I wrote in another report, people seem to either love or hate Trump with no in-between, so it would not surprise me that, as this case goes on, more jurors are removed.

For now, however, we have a full jury, with the alternates all selected on Friday.

On Monday, we can expect to hear opening arguments, then the real fun begins.