Trump warned he's facing a 'stacked deck' jury pool as hush money case heads to trial

According to CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, the pool of potential jurors who will sit in judgment during Donald Trump's hush money trial will not be to his liking when the court finally convenes.

Now that New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan has dispensed with all of the former president's lawyers' filings to delay the trial — or toss out the charges filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — jury selection is expected to begin on April 15.

As Honig wrote for Intelligencer, the odds are definitely not in Trump's favor even with the use of challenges that will be used to preclude New Yorkers from the jury to be seated.

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While all potential jurists are supposed to be neutral before taking part, the former prosecutor bluntly stated that is a pipe dream for a case to be heard in Manhattan where Trump once made his home before heading off to Florida.

As Honig put it, Trump's lawyers are facing a "stacked deck" simply based on how poorly the former president has done in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

"The challenge here is that we’ve never seen a criminal defendant who inspires more polarized views than Donald Trump. People either worship the man or despise him — in Manhattan, it’s mostly the latter — and there’s little in between. The trick for the lawyers will be to suss out which jurors fall into which camp," he explained before adding, "In New York County (Manhattan, that is), this process will result in a stacked deck for prosecutors. Let’s run some rudimentary math. In the 2020 election, Trump garnered a measly 12.3 percent of the county’s vote. Let’s be generous to Trump and say he holds 20 percent political support among Manhattanites."

Using that as a baseline, Honig wrote that out of the first 32 potential jurors "who get through the 'for cause' dismissal phase — before the parties exercise their peremptory strikes to narrow the pool down to 12 final jurors — we’d expect about six to be Trump supporters; let’s assume he gets a good draw and winds up with eight enthusiasts in that jury pool. Sounds pretty good for Trump, right? Some of them will almost certainly make their way onto the jury, right?"

Not so fast, he wrote, because prosecutors also have "ten peremptory strikes, which they can use to get rid of jurors for almost any reason. So while prosecutors can wipe the slate entirely clean of Trump supporters, Trump can’t possibly eliminate all the jurors who lean against him."

On the plus side for Trump, despite prosecutors having a "mathematical advantage," Trump and his lawyers' best hope would be for one or more jurors favorable to him to slip through and cause a hung jury which could lead to a mistrial and then starting the whole process over again if prosecutors choose to do so.

"Still, at bottom, prosecutors have every advantage here," he explained. "They’re picking from a distinctly anti-Trump pool, and they have the ability to weed out any — and if they’re good enough at it, every — Trump sympathizer. The DA’s office just needs to play the percentages, while Trump’s lawyers must hope that an undetectable outlier slips through."

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