A former lawyer for Donald Trump and Harvard University Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz warned that the former president got a “bad jury” in the ongoing hush money trial.
On Friday, 12 jurors and six alternates were selected for the trial on accusations against Trump’s alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
“This is a bad jury for Donald Trump,” Dershowitz said in Newsmax on Friday.
“I think it’s too much of a New York Times, TikTok jury. This is maybe the best you can do with a New York jury pool, but it’s not a good jury for Donald Trump.”
The Harvard professor emeritus added that “the best he’s likely to do is a hung jury,” and while the jurors may acquit Trump, he “can’t imagine they will.”
Dershowitz also hit Judge Juan Merchan’s decision not to oblige prosecutors to disclose the names of their first three witnesses.
Merchan remarked, “I can’t fault them for that.”
Dershowitz remarked that the decision was “not fair.”
“You have a right to prepare, and if I were Trump’s lawyers, as soon as the name of the first question is going forward, I would call for a recess” and ask for multiple days to prepare questions for cross-examination.
“You can’t just call witnesses out of the blue and expect that you’d be ready for cross-examination or objections,” Dershowitz said.
Moreover, he noted that the ongoing gag order on Trump was “outrageously unfair” and emphasized that “[criticism] is part of the essence of our First Amendment, and it should apply to anybody who’s playing a role” in the trial.
Last week, Dershowitz also noted that the bogus criminal trial against Trump went “unfairly as expected.”
“It’s going as it thought it would, very unfairly against Trump,” Dershowitz noted.
“The questions that are being asked of the jurors are absurd.
“They’re asking the jurors, ‘Can you be fair?’ What juror in his right mind would ever say, No, I can’t be fair. The question should not ask the jurors anything about their own ability to render a fair verdict. That’s a decision that should be made only after extensive examination of the facts.”
Dershowitz continued” “What have you heard about Trump? What have you said about Trump? What have people told you about Trump? Have you expressed your views about Trump? These are the issues.
“Don’t ask a juror whether it can be fair. Of course, a juror will always say they can be fair if they want to serve on the jury. If they don’t want to serve on the jury, they’ll say, No, they can’t be fair, even if they could be fair.”
With these, Dershowitz predicted that Trump would be convicted despite it being “the weakest [case] I’ve seen in 60 years of teaching, practicing, and writing about criminal law.”
