The first day of former President Donald Trump’s first criminal trial began sluggishly, with lawyers dealing with procedural matters, turning to jury selection following an afternoon lunch break.
For hours, each side battled over a series of pending legal issues, keeping the hundreds of prospective jurors waiting until mid-afternoon as Judge Juan Merchan mulled what evidence could be admitted and whether Trump violated his gag order.
Trump at times during the day closed his eyes, appearing to nod off. He also would lean back in his chair motionless with his arms crossed for considerable periods, but observers disagreed over whether the former president was asleep.
The court has imposed extensive measures to shield the jurors’ identities from the press and the public. Lawyers on both sides will receive the identities in a written list, but they cannot photograph or copy it, the judge said. Video feeds in an overflow room at the courthouse cut out when jurors moved throughout the room.
On Friday, Trump’s campaign sent out a fundraising email that read in part, “72 hours until all hell breaks loose!” invoking similar language to Trump’s posts in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
But outside the Manhattan courthouse, where it was a sunny day with temperatures in the high 70s, the scene was much calmer than Trump’s arraignment last year. A heavy security presence greeted a few dozen protesters who showed up.
Ariel Kohane, 53, one of the pro-Trump protesters, said he believed the trial was a “farce” and Manhattan wasn’t a fair venue, but he’s holding out hope that Trump still won’t be convicted.
“If we’re gonna have one or two fair-minded jurors, impartial, who can just look at the facts only, then they’ll do the right thing and acquit him,” said Kohane, wearing a “Jews for Trump” shirt. “If they can put the politics aside with all your emotions aside, but it’s going to be very, very hard to get a fair trial here.”
Inside the courthouse, it was business as usual on other floors. A steady stream of defendants wearing handcuffs were ushered into the building throughout the day, seemingly unaware that the first criminal trial of a former president was taking place 14 floors above them.
In the morning, Trump entered the courtroom flanked by his defense team, hunching his shoulders but lifting his chin and donning a stern face. He strode past nine rows of wooden benches on each side of the courtroom, then empty, to take his seat at the defense table.
The first former commander-in-chief to stand trial on criminal charges, Trump looked as if he nodded off a few times.
“He appeared to be asleep. Routinely his head would fall down,” said Maggie Haberman, senior political correspondent at The New York Times, who reported that Trump looked like he was sleeping. She said that Trump didn’t seem to be paying attention when lawyer Todd Blanche “passed him notes for several minutes before Mr. Trump appeared to jolt awake and notice them” and that his “jaw kept falling on his chest and his mouth kept going slack.”
The former president likes to project an image of vitality despite being 77 and his critics jumped at the chance to contradict that impression.
“If Trump is too old and weak to stay awake at his own criminal trial, what do you think will happen in the Situation Room?,” asked Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Obama.
Trump is accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment his ex-fixer, Michael Cohen, made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to cover up an alleged affair. He has pleaded not guilty and denies the affair.
The gist of the prosecution case is that paying Daniels to keep quiet was intended to influence the 2016 election, which became crucial days after Trump was heard bragging in extremely graphic terms to TV host Billy Bush about women in a tape recorded in 2005.
Trump contended that “when you’re a star … you can do anything” — including grabbing women by the genitals.
The “Access Hollywood” tape, which became public in October 2016, could underscore why the Daniels issue was so politically important.
Prosecutors wanted to be able to play the tape to jurors, but Trump’s defense team opposed that and Merchan reaffirmed an earlier ruling, holding that it would be prejudicial to allow the recording itself to be played, but that lawyers could quote from it.
Prosecutors contend that Trump violated a gag order — by posting social media comment that calls Daniels and Michael Cohen “two sleaze bags” — and they want him fined for doing so, at the rate of $1,000 per social media post.
In addition to the fines, prosecutors say that Trump should be warned by the judge that further infractions could result in imprisonment.
Jury selection is expected to resume Tuesday and could last several days or perhaps weeks.
The judge overseeing the New York hush money trial said that Trump cannot attend arguments on presidential immunity at the Supreme Court next week.
It came after the judge earlier delayed a decision on allowing Trump to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation in May.
The attempts by Trump to take off certain days of his hush money trial that is expected to last weeks, if not months, came as the first day of trial was officially underway in Manhattan.
The decision to not allow Trump to be in Washington, D.C., on April 25, when the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on a presidential immunity claim Trump is making in his federal criminal case, came just before the New York trial adjourned Monday.
“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,” Judge Juan Merchan said to Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, rejecting his request to let the former president play hooky.
“I will see him here next week,” the judge added.
Under New York state law, Trump is required to attend the entirety of his trial unless he gets special permission from the judge to skip.
After court adjourned for the day, Trump suggested Merchan believes he is “superior” to the Supreme Court for preventing him from attending the high court’s oral arguments.
The former president also accused Merchan of preventing him from attending his son Barron’s high school graduation in May. The judge declined to rule one way or another on the matter earlier Monday, but did not outright deny granting the former president the ability to attend the event.
“I was looking forward to that graduation with his mother and father there,” Trump told reporters. “It looks like the judge isn’t going to allow me to escape this scam. It’s a scam trial.”
In his remarks outside the courtroom, Trump also blasted Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) for attending the trial all day, suggesting that outside the courthouse people are being “mugged and killed all day long.”
Daniels, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, ex-campaign aide Hope Hicks and perhaps even Trump himself could all be compelled to appear as witnesses in what promises to be a sensational multi-week trial.
Should he ultimately be found guilty, Trump could theoretically face more than a decade in prison, according to legal analysts who point out that the felony counts against the 2020 election loser are classified as Class E crimes in New York, the lowest level felonies in the state.