The first criminal trial facing former President Trump is also the one in which Americans are least convinced he committed a crime, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds. Only about one-third of U.S. adults say Trump did something illegal in the hush money case for which jury selection began Monday, while close to half think he did something illegal in the other three criminal cases pending against him. Poll respondents are fairly skeptical that Trump is getting a fair shake from the prosecutors in the New York case — or that the judge and jurors can be impartial in cases involving him. Still, half of Americans would consider Trump unfit to serve as president if he is convicted of falsifying business documents to cover up hush money payments to a woman who said he had a sexual encounter with her, AP reports.
More than half of the first group of prospective jurors in the trial said Monday that they could not hear the case fairly and were immediately dismissed, Axios reports. The rapid disqualification of at least 50 possible jurors underscores the difficult reality of finding a dozen New Yorkers to form the jury in one of the most high-profile cases in U.S. history. At least nine additional jurors were excused after saying they could not serve for any other reason, leaving about 34 of the 96 potential jurors remaining from the first pool. "I just couldn't do it," one prospective juror said in the hallway outside of the courtroom. Of the jurors who said they couldn't be fair or impartial in the case, over two dozen were white women, 1 Hispanic woman, and 4 women of Asian descent. Fourteen were white men and 1 man of Asian descent.