Trump Jurors Will Be Asked About Antifa, QAnon, Truth Social (1)

Potential jurors at Donald Trump’s first criminal trial will be asked whether they belong to fringe groups like Antifa and QAnon, as well as whether they’ve been to rallies supporting or opposing the former president.

Justice Juan Merchan included the questions in a letter Monday to lawyers for Trump and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case. The document was released just before an appeals court judge rejected an attempt by Trump to delay the trial over claims that a New York City jury can’t be impartial.

Bragg alleges Trump falsified dozens of business records to conceal a hush money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election to keep her quiet about an alleged affair. The payoff was part of an alleged scheme to influence the 2016 election by preventing salacious stories about Trump from being published.

The questionnaire is similar to those in Trump’s two civil trials earlier this year, both of which he lost. But more is at stake in Trump’s first criminal trial, and lawyers on both sides will be under intense pressure to select jurors who can be fair, even if they hold strong opinions about a former president who’s a particularly divisive defendant and a candidate to return to the White House.

The proposed list hints at how contentious the jury selection process may be when the trial starts April 15. It could take up to two weeks to pick a jury, or about a quarter of the trial.

Among other things, potential jurors will also be asked if they use Trump’s social-media platform Truth Social, whose parent company has lost billions of dollars in market value since it started trading publicly two weeks ago. They’ll also be asked if they belong to any anti-Trump groups or if they have any “feelings of opinions about how Mr. Trump is being treated in this case?”

Possible jurors will also be asked if they have ever attended a rally or campaign event for Trump, if they have a relative or close friend who volunteered for his campaign and if they’ve ever followed Trump on social media. Panelists will also be asked if they have any strong opinions or firmly held beliefs about whether a former president may be criminally charged in state court.

Just after Merchan released the questionnaire, an appeals court judge rejected Trump’s attempt to delay the trial, or move it out of Manhattan entirely, citing recent polling and “a quantitative analysis of media coverage shows that a fair and impartial cannot be selected. Bragg had argued that Trump’s survey showed that most of the island’s inhabitants are confident they can deliver a verdict based only on the evidence.

Earlier Monday, Trump made a last-ditch effort to get Merchan removed from the case over claims that his daughter might profit professionally from the proceeding as an employee of a consulting firm that has Democrats as clients.

(Updates with additional questions from the filing, ruling starting in second paragraph)

To contact the reporters on this story:
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net;
Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

Anthony Aarons

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