Donald Trump apparently held out hope that one juror — who he viewed as skeptical of the New York prosecutors’ case — would keep a guilty verdict from being imposed in his hush money trial.
Per Rolling Stone, Trump insiders were still disillusioned that a lone juror could keep the former president safe from any number of the 34 counts of felony falsification of business records. Ultimately, all 12 jurors found him guilty on each of the counts, after the weeks-long trial ended on Thursday afternoon.
Trump went so far as to call the jury member “my juror” in private conversations, based on his confidence in his legal team’s analysis of the Manhattan resident’s body language, Rolling Stone reported. They were hopeful that smiles and approving nods from the juror could be enough to achieve a hung jury.
Any one juror who was not convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Trump had engaged in the falsification of business records, or even that he had not conspired to commit election interference when covering up the payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, would have been enough to save him from accountability. Even so, prosecutors successfully dispelled any doubt.
Trump and his lawyers were allowed to learn the identity of the jurors during the case, though Judge Juan Merchan did order their identities be kept from the public, instructing journalists to keep their descriptions of jurors to a minimum after a Fox News host spooked a potential juror in April. Though the legal team has claimed to the state’s Supreme Court that a Manhattan jury would be biased against the president, all 12 members were selected after deliberate and thorough investigation into their potential biases from the prosecution, defense, and judge.
Attacking Judge Merchan and the prosecution, led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump made careful effort not to mention or criticize the jury in a press conference on Friday morning.
While his legal team plots a fight in appellate courts, Trump’s most violent supporters angle for vengeance. The jurors, now dismissed from service after delivering their verdict, still face serious threats and doxxing attempts online, with some suggesting that a member of the Trump legal team should leak their identities.
