Jury selection has been underway this week in the Manhattan criminal trial against former President Donald Trump, with the selection process getting off to a slow start due in part to the difficulty of finding impartial jurors in the Democrat-dominated jurisdiction.
As of Friday, however, all 12 members had reportedly been seated as information about each of the anonymous jurors began to surface.
Several individuals said they receive their news from left-leaning sources, primarily The New York Times, and one admitted that she does not like Trump’s “persona,” but attorneys on both sides agreed to the makeup of the jury.
Meanwhile, a number of prospective jurors who were dismissed by either prosecutors or defense attorneys began to share their stories — including a woman identified only as Kat during an MSNBC interview.
She acknowledged that she was excused because she “couldn’t be impartial,” though she did not elaborate. Conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, however, asserted that she is a Trump supporter and argued that she should have kept her bias to herself in order to serve on the jury.
I can hardly believe this lunacy. A Trump supporter—probably the solitary Trump supporter—has a chance to serve on the jury but stands up and volunteers she is not impartial. She is promptly dismissed. The GOP is truly the STUPID PARTY pic.twitter.com/35vh7XjyL9
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) April 18, 2024
Kat went on to describe the experience of being called to serve on a jury only about eight months after becoming a U.S. citizen.
“I was shocked,” she recalled upon realizing on Tuesday that the case she had been selected to appear for involved the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “I was sitting on the second row, like six feet away, and when I realized Trump was there, I was like, oh wow, I couldn’t believe it. Everybody was shocked. Everybody was frozen.”
Although she said she had been “too busy” to closely follow the case, she was familiar with “the headlines.”
As for whether Trump could receive an unbiased reception from a jury in Manhattan, Kat maintained that it was unlikely.
Asserting that she was “not sure” an impartial jury could be found from the existing pool, she added: “Everybody has biases and stereotypes in their mind, so you have to be a really deep and fair person, which is very hard to do. I hope they do. This is justice, right?”
