by Jeff Childers
Unsurprisingly, two already-picked Trump trial jurors flamed out yesterday, after hardworking online sleuths uncovered virulent anti-Trump social media posts that contradicted the jurors’ innocent voire dire answers. Axios ran the story under the headline, “Jurors in Trump’s hush money trial face doxxing, security concerns.”
Though it was obvious from day one, Axios effectively admitted there is no feasible way to keep the jurors’ identities secret. “[A]lthough they are intending to keep the jurors’ identities anonymous, it may not be completely possible,” said Cornell Law professor Valerie Hans.
Nope. It will never happen.
Axios wrongly diagnosed the problem as social media — i.e., for providing the evidence of the juror’s lies. The liberal paper explained that “intense public scrutiny and obsessive online sleuthing — enabled by social media platforms — have made it far easier to narrow down the jury pool than in past celebrity trials.” But that’s wrong.
The reason these jurors are being doxxed so fast is there’s never been so much attention paid to a trial before, ever. At least, not in our lifetimes. Even the celebrated OJ trial, including its dramatic highway standoff, comes in as a distant second. Social media or not, the trial of an American President during an election campaign and on the eve of an imminent world war, on trumped up charges (sorry), grips the attention of the entire world.
Regardless of their bona fides, there is no way to keep those jurors’ identities secret.
Remember this: each juror should have been immediately sequestered as soon as they were chosen. No contact. No electronics. No phone calls except for real emergencies, which if they do happen should disqualify that juror, who should be promptly dismissed under a gag order.
I’ll bet you ten gallons of Joe Biden’s focus-group tested favorite flavor of ice cream, mint chocolate chip, that very soon the talking heads will all be chattering nonstop about the missed opportunity to sequester jurors.
Anyway, the two already-identified jurors were immediately outed as lying, anti-Trump moles. One was an older, white oncology nurse (female). In what the Washington Post described as a surreal exchange, she tried covering for her awful 2016 posts bashing Trump by apologizing to him in court and saying she’d gotten a little crazy during the election but was fine now.
Her 2016 posts said things like: “We must … protect the rights of people at risk from this racist, sexist narcissist”, “I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue was notarized”, and “Trump is an anathema to everything I was told about love and about Jesus.”
Under rehabilitative questioning by District Attorney lawyers, she tried apologizing directly to the President “for the tone” of her old posts, and generously offered to retract her accusation that Trump was racist. She admitted that she still disliked “some of his behavior around females” but broad-mindedly explained that “his ethics are his personal business.”
Judge Merchan said it was a “close call,” but he ultimately struck the mendacious nurse for cause. “That was some pretty extreme rhetoric,” the judge explained.
Nobody knows how many more moles were seated on that jury, but there are undoubtedly more. At this point, it’s more likely Joe Biden will win the Tour de France than Trump will get a fair trial.
All in all yesterday, even with the two disqualified jurors, they managed to select twelve jurors plus an alternate. Mostly because Trump ran out of strikes. But Judge Merchan wisely decided they need more alternates, just in case, so jury selection continues today. It’s possible the trial proper will begin on Monday morning, leaving an insane weekend of more juror doxxing to come.
