ORLANDO, Fla. — For now, former President Donald J. Trump, indicted for hoarding classified government documents at his South Florida home, is scheduled to go on trial in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce, a venue that many observers view as a potentially favorable place because of its politically conservative jury pool.
But the challenges facing both sides in the case may well transcend politics, lawyers and jury consultants say, and it’s far from certain that political leanings of would-be jurors will be the deciding factor in the case’s outcome.
“This is probably the most difficult jury selection imaginable,” said longtime Miami lawyer Jeffrey Tew, who has defended a number of public officials in Florida. “What you want in your jury is to have people judge the facts and the law without any preconceptions as to what the facts are and what the laws are.”
“You’re choosing a jury in probably the most political trial in American history,” Tew added. “Former President Trump from the day he started running has been in the news almost every day, and with his personality he has a very forceful personality that turns some people off and turns some people on.”
Last week, Judge Aileen M. Cannon set a tentative trial for the two-week period starting August 14 in the local courthouse where she presides, and late Friday the prosecution team asked for a delay until December. The location is the northernmost point of the Southern District of Florida, which stretches from Key West to Miami to Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach and on to Fort Pierce. Each city is the home of one of the district’s five divisions. Each division has a different mix of voter registrations.
The farther north one travels from Broward County, a rare Florida stronghold for the Democratic Party, the more conservative the population becomes, voter registration statistics show.
In Fort Pierce, which is a division that includes Martin, St, Lucie, Indian River, Highlands, and Okeechobee counties, state election records show the voter registration numbers lean heavily toward Republicans in four of the counties, with the Democrats holding a roughly 3,500-voter edge in St. Lucie.
Trump overwhelmed President Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, records show, in all four Republican counties in the last two presidential elections as he won Florida both times.
“Florida is a good venue,” Tew said. ‘It’s a red state.’’
Under district rules, court clerks in each division are expected to keep a pool of a minimum number of juror prospects to fill trial and grand juries. In Fort Pierce, the number is 18,000. In West Palm Beach it’s 100,000, in Fort Lauderdale, 150,000 and in Miami, 250,000. The lists must be refreshed every two years.
Despite the trial date ordered by Cannon, many observers doubt the proceedings will start that soon because of the volume of preparations to be undertaken by both sides. Trump’s co-defendant, valet and personal assistant Waltine Nauta, has yet to retain a Florida-based lawyer for his scheduled arraignment on Tuesday, according to court records. Trump pleaded not guilty earlier this month to the charges in the 37-count indictment against him.
Observers also believe Cannon left the door open to move the case to another city. While declaring that all hearings should take place in Fort Pierce, she wrote that “modifications” would be “made as necessary as this matter proceeds.”
Cannon only briefly covered jury selection in her order.
“Counsel shall be prepared to conduct limited voir dire following the Court’s questioning of the panel,” she wrote. “Prior to Calendar Call, each party may file no more than 10 proposed voir dire questions (including any sub-parts) for the Court to consider asking of the venire.”
And she added: “The Court will not permit the backstriking of jurors.”
Rapid research
Marc Hurwitz, president of Crossroads Investigations, a Miami-based investigation and jury consulting firm not involved in the case, suggested that both sides will need to gather as much information as possible about the prospective jurors in a very short time.
“We get our entire team to look through their social media, anything that will show their political leanings,” he said. “We’re doing it super fast. The client tells us what does their ideal juror look like? What is the criminal background? Are they a business owner? Do they have kids? Do they have liens, bankruptcies or foreclosures?”
Other information to be gathered includes their occupations, education levels, political donations, and whether they are “pro- or anti-government.” For example, have they experienced instances of “government interference” such as a lien or permitting issue?
“We only have a few hours to look,” Hurwitz said. “In a case like this, there may be hundreds of jurors. They generally will take 50 at a time.”
“I would want to know how they are registered to vote,” Tew said. “Secondly, are they a Democrat or Republican and did they vote in the last presidential election and who did they vote for?
“Do they watch cable news and if they do what channels do they watch?” he added. Are they watching CNN and reading the New York Times? Or is it Fox News and the New York Post?
It would also be instructive, he said, to know whether the prospective jurors followed other legal actions against Trump, such as the sexual abuse and defamation case he lost to the New York writer E. Jean Carroll.
“We have a Republican lawyer in our office — a lady who hates Trump because of his personality and history of controversies with women,” Tew said. ”I would want to know about that.”
High profile, complex cases
U.S. v. Trump joins a long line of high-octane cases in the Southern District of Florida that have generated national and international publicity, intrigue and major political ramifications.
And because of the complexity, there is no one factor such as politics that will guide the jury’s decision, some lawyers said.
“That is too simplistic an approach just to focus on politics,” said Nellie King, a West Palm Beach lawyer who is president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
In the early 2000s, a clutch of spies known as the “Cuban Five” were rounded up by the FBI and stood trial for conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder and acting as agents of a foreign government. All were found guilty amid a hostile courtroom atmosphere in Miami that included the heckling of defense lawyers by local exiles.
In the early 1990s, deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was tried and found guilty in a drug trafficking and money laundering case after U.S. military forces invaded his country, captured him and arranged to have him delivered to the federal court in Miami. The general was convicted, but not before a holdout juror had to be persuaded through prayer and pleadings by fellow panel members.
In the 1980s, in a West Palm Beach federal court, a U.S. Air Force officer by the name of Richard Collins, now deceased, was quickly acquitted by a jury after he was accused of embezzling money from secret military operations in Southeast Asia.
National publicity preceded the jury selection, said Miami-based lawyer Stephen Bronis, who said it took the panel just 2½ hours to acquit his client.
“Obviously there was an inquiry into how jurors felt about the military, about whether any of them served in the military, and how they felt about the war in Southeast Asia where my client was operating during the time,” Bronis said. The case itself was featured on the CBS “60 Minutes” and ABC “20/20” news magazine programs.
“Given the nature of the case and what we thought was the theory of defense and who our client was, I wanted conservatives and not necessarily liberals who could identify with the nature of the enterprise my client was involved in — assisting the government and things like that.”
As in the Trump case, all of the cases involved classified information, but for reasons that did not involve the alleged illegal possession of documents.
Anthony Natale, a West Palm Beach lawyer who as a Miami federal public defender represented Jose Padilla in a terrorist assistance case, noted the Trump case boils down to not what is in the documents, but how the former president acted when confronted about his alleged illegal possession of them.
“The case has all sorts of aspects to it,” Natale said. “Once it was discovered (Trump had classified papers) and they asked to give them back and he didn’t, that’s a problem. If you talk to the FBI and don’t tell them the truth, that could be a problem.”
“The best way to look at the documents is that they’re contraband,” Natale added. “And If they’re classified, they’re classified, and the substance of it doesn’t matter.”
The jurors, he added, are unlikely to see any of them, but are more likely to be given summaries approved by the judge.
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