05-11-2023, 12:32 AM
Interesting. Juror 77 who joined in the unanimous jury verdict (under NY law, verdicts must be unanimous), was a bit of a MAGA fan. He survived an application to dismiss him for inferred bias as he had listened on a few occasions over the preceding 6 months to a podcast by Tim Pool, a far-right, pro-Trump commentator aligned with Steve Bannon. Strangely enough, Trump’s lawyer was forced to argue that a political affiliation didn’t mean bias, although Trump has smeared anyone who might vote for Democrats as clearly biased against him. The trial judge denied the application.
I had assumed E Jean Carroll had been lucky to score a jury full of Democrats, which wasn’t far fetched because NY is a very Blue State. But there was a Trump-friendly juror who could have vetoed any verdict against Trump. Maybe he did a deal to go along with the verdict if the rape allegation wasn’t proven. Trump is already trying to paint it as a verdict by a jury of biased Democrats under the direction of a biased Democratic judge who manipulated the trial to ensure a verdict against him. Yet the jury had a far-right-leaning juror and the judge allowed him to stay on the jury.
In a haunting reminder of how Trump has attacked democratic institutions using stochastic terrorism (making calls for action against his enemies in the hope that some will use violence against them), the trial judge advised the jury to remain anonymous as they had during the trial by his order. He suggested that the 15 minutes of fame they might receive by appearing in the media was not worth the consequences that might flow. And he told the jurors that any juror who took that risk should not identify any other juror and put them in harms way. My God, this a former POTUS and the judge, rightly, gave the jury advice he would have given in the case of the criminal trial of a Mafia Don.
I had assumed E Jean Carroll had been lucky to score a jury full of Democrats, which wasn’t far fetched because NY is a very Blue State. But there was a Trump-friendly juror who could have vetoed any verdict against Trump. Maybe he did a deal to go along with the verdict if the rape allegation wasn’t proven. Trump is already trying to paint it as a verdict by a jury of biased Democrats under the direction of a biased Democratic judge who manipulated the trial to ensure a verdict against him. Yet the jury had a far-right-leaning juror and the judge allowed him to stay on the jury.
In a haunting reminder of how Trump has attacked democratic institutions using stochastic terrorism (making calls for action against his enemies in the hope that some will use violence against them), the trial judge advised the jury to remain anonymous as they had during the trial by his order. He suggested that the 15 minutes of fame they might receive by appearing in the media was not worth the consequences that might flow. And he told the jurors that any juror who took that risk should not identify any other juror and put them in harms way. My God, this a former POTUS and the judge, rightly, gave the jury advice he would have given in the case of the criminal trial of a Mafia Don.