Special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday filed a motion that urged U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to put guardrails in place to protect the possible jurors in Donald Trump’s election-subversion case.
Former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner suggested Smith hadn’t just “taken off the gloves” with the move. It “looks like he’s boxed them up, taped up the box, and sent them to long-term storage,” Kirschner said on a new episode of his “Justice Matters” podcast.
Smith encouraged Chutkan to streamline the jury selection process with a questionnaire for potential jurors, ban their details from being public, and prohibit direct contact between attorneys and jurors.
The motion referred to Republican 2024 front-runner Trump’s attack on social media of a court official in his civil fraud trial in New York, which prompted a judge to slap the former president with a gag order.
If I’m being honest I would have hesitation being a juror in this kind of trial for the exact reasons the special prosecutor is talking about.
I would love to be a juror in that trial. If soldiers can give their lives fighting for our country, this sort of civic duty seems like the least I could do.
This is one of the things that worries me. The damage may have already been done and may be irreversible.
I’m also going to be completely honest: If there were any chance I’d be sitting on a jury for a Trump trial, I’d skip jury duty and take the punishment for that before even considering showing up. Take a look at the rise in political violence. Take a look at what happened to the two election workers from GA. Take a look at the grand jurors who have had their information doxxed. Prosecutors and judges having to take on extra security. Witnesses who need to go into hiding. And he hasn’t even been convicted yet. Heck, the trials haven’t even begun.
Nope. Slap me with a fine. Throw me in jail for a few days. I’m OK with that. What I’m not OK with is my life and the lives of my family members being completely upended and receiving regular death threats because a lone-wolf MAGA nut thinks I might be on a jury. I’ll pass, thank you. Never mind the stress of it all, I wouldn’t have anywhere close to the money necessary to keep myself and my family safe if either Trump or one of his followers decide that I look like a good enough target.
I would not be surprised if there are many others who feel the same way. I could easily see any of these cases come grinding to a screeching halt because jury selection is nigh-on impossible. There are plenty of RICO cases right now that have been stalled in the courts for months because of jury selection issues, and if they have that much trouble seating juries for that, imagine what seating a jury for a Trump trial is going to be like with all the credible threats of violence flying around.
And IMO, if anything happens to any of the people involved in these cases, good luck getting a jury to be seated at all; it’ll be virtually impossible to do so once they can say “I’ll pass after what happened to the last guy.”
Recognizing your solid points: it is because this case is so high profile that you can continue to find jurors. People will be willing to become jurors even if it means they become martyrs because this would fix them on the right side of history.
The problem with that is (a) finding enough of them that are willing to take the risk, and (b) having them not be weeded out during the jury selection process for being too biased against Trump. I do agree that some would be willing to do it, but I’m skeptical about whether they’d be able to get the chance.