Day 1 of Trump's trial: 9 potential jurors and a motion for contempt

NEW YORK — Nine potential jurors in Donald Trump’s hush money trial cleared an initial round of vetting Monday, as the first-ever criminal trial of a former president kicked off in a Manhattan courtroom.

The small group is about a quarter of the total number of people who, in the coming days, must be deemed qualified to serve on the jury based on a detailed questionnaire designed to root out bias. Then, prosecutors and lawyers for Trump will further whittle that field to a 12-member jury plus a handful of alternates.

But before jury selection could even begin on Monday, the start of the historic trial was waylaid for hours by a decidedly unhistoric and familiar phenomenon: the former president’s angry social media tirade against the prosecution’s star witness, Michael Cohen.

Trump used his Truth Social platform over the weekend to suggest that Cohen — his former attorney and fixer — should be prosecuted for lying. Cohen, who was famously prosecuted for lying under oath during previous Trump-related proceedings, has been a target of Trump’s disdain for years. But last month, Trump’s judge in the hush money case, Justice Juan Merchan, issued a gag order that barred Trump from commenting on “reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation … in this criminal proceeding.”

Cohen is expected to testify that Trump orchestrated a scheme to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign in order to prevent her from disclosing her claim that she had a sexual encounter with Trump while he was married. Manhattan prosecutors have charged Trump with falsifying business records related to the hush money.

Trump’s latest attack, as well as his broader vitriol against Cohen, became a focus of the first hours of the trial on Monday morning, delaying the arduous process of selecting a jury for most of the day. Prosecutors asked Merchan to hold Trump in contempt and fine him $3,000 for violating the gag order. They also asked for permission to use the attacks as evidence in the trial itself, if Trump seeks to discredit Cohen’s testimony.

Merchan set a hearing for April 23 to discuss the prosecutors’ contempt request. He did not immediately rule on the request to use the attacks as evidence.

Trump wasn’t cowed by prosecutors’ move to hold him in contempt. During the trial’s lunch break, he posted a video of one of his prominent allies Laura Loomer making various pro-Trump statements through a bullhorn — including criticisms of Cohen. In the video, Loomer also criticized Merchan’s wife. Two weeks ago, Merchan expanded his gag order to prohibit Trump from commenting on the judge’s family members.

The judge on Monday morning ruled on a few other significant evidentiary issues. Prosecutors sought, and received, permission from Merchan to tell jurors what Trump said on the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump is heard discussing his ability to get away with groping women at will because of his stardom. Merchan barred the prosecution, though, from playing the tape itself.

Prosecutors say the tape is relevant because its October 2016 release immediately preceded the hush money payment to Daniels, and Trump’s campaign was frantically working to prevent an erosion of support among women voters.

Merchan handed Trump a victory by denying prosecutors’ request to introduce evidence of sexual assault allegations against Trump made in the wake of the “Access Hollywood” tape. The judge called that evidence “complete hearsay.”

When jury selection finally began after the lunch break, the challenge of selecting a panel of 12 unbiased jurors in bright blue Manhattan became clear. Of the first group of 96 prospective jurors who were ushered into the courtroom, more than half were immediately dismissed after they said they couldn’t be impartial.

They were let go after Merchan ticked off a list of names of people associated with the case, including the former president, his son Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon. Then the judge excused at least nine more prospective jurors after they said they couldn’t serve for another reason.

While Trump said and expressed little during Monday’s proceedings, he did react when Merchan told prospective jurors that Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. In response, Trump looked down and shook his head.

Though the jury selection proceedings were relatively monotonous, one prospective juror in Trump’s trial sparked laughter by telling the judge she enjoys shopping and hitting “the club” in her spare time.

The woman, who works at Bloomingdales, also named only Al Jazeera as her news source. She was stricken from the pool when she answered “yes” to a question about whether she has strong feelings about Trump that could affect her impartiality.

By the time court broke for the day on Monday, the nine prospective jurors who passed the initial round of screening included an Upper West Side bookseller who told the courtroom: “I feel that nobody is above the law, whether it be a former president or a sitting president or a janitor.”

An Upper East Side man who works as a prosecutor in the Bronx district attorney’s office and enjoys hiking and camping elicited amusement when he said that his girlfriend works in finance “but I honestly don’t know what she does.”

Two native New Yorkers made the initial cut: An Upper East Side woman who works as an oncology nurse at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and a male lawyer who lives on Sutton Place and previously worked for Janet DiFiore, the former chief judge of New York’s highest court.

After the jury pool left the courtroom, Merchan rejected a request by Trump’s lawyers to allow him to be excused from the trial next Thursday so that he can attend Supreme Court arguments on the immunity claims he has raised in another one of his criminal cases: his federal indictment in Washington for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

“Arguing before the Supreme Court is a big deal, and I can certainly appreciate why your client would want to be there, but a trial in New York Supreme Court … is also a big deal,” Merchan told Trump lawyer Todd Blanche. (In New York, trial courts are known as “supreme courts.”)

“I will see him here next week.”

Orden and Feuerherd reported from New York. Cheney reported from Washington.