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Day 3 Of Jury Selection In Trump Hush Money Case; Six Jurors Remain After One Is Excused; 12 More Needed; Prosecutors Say Trump Is Still Violating Gag Order; Five Jurors Remain After Two Are Excused; 13 More Needed; Trump Wants A Cut If GOP Candidates Use His Name To Raise Money. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired April 18, 2024 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, jury selection hits a bump in the road. As of last night, seven jurors were seated in the people of the state of New York versus Donald J. Trump. Now there are only six. CNN is inside the courtroom with all the breaking details and difficulties of finding a jury to decide the fate of the most famous and polarizing person in the world.

Plus, the speaker's gamble. Mike Johnson's plan is to, quote, do the right thing and let the chips fall. What is unclear now is whether a rightwing revolt over his decision to push a Ukraine aid bill will cost him his gavel.

And a Kennedy family reunion with a notable no show. This hour more than a dozen Kennedys will endorse Joe Biden on the campaign trail. It's a major show of force against one of their own, whose candidacy could ultimately tank President Biden's reelection.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

We do start in Manhattan where Donald Trump is inside a courtroom. Right now, as his legal team and prosecutors question dozens of potential jurors. Our colleagues in the room say that so far, the former president appears in gross, listening to the people in the jury box, give their answers.

96 people were sworn in this morning. 48 were dismissed right away because they said they couldn't be fair and impartial to Donald Trump. Nine others were let go because of conflicts. And it is unclear now how many others will make it through the next hour. There is even issues with seated jurors.

Today juror number two was excused after saying this to the judge. Quote, aspects of my identity already have been out there in the public yesterday alone. I had friends, colleagues and family push things to my phone, questioning my identity as a juror.

CNN's Laura Coates is near the Manhattan courthouse along with our colleagues Kristen Holmes, and Kara Scannell. Laura?

LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: This is really an important day. We're technically on day three now of jury selection. We began the day ladies having seven jurors. Do you think that would be that much closer to the coveted 18, including the 12, and then of course, six alternates. Then you have the step backwards from one person being dismissed, excused because of the compromising of anonymity. There's a lot happening in the courtroom about the questions and the questionnaire once again, a very key role here.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. So, we are now in the throes of this after the pool was whittled down by those who felt they couldn't be fair and impartial. They've got nine jurors currently in the jury box. And that means that nine of them have gone through those 42 questions, learning a little bit about them. There's a number of people who work in finance. There's an attorney, a stay-at-home mom, and they're just given the biographical information at this point.

Now, once they fill up to another -- once they fill the box, which has 18 seeds, then they will begin the questions by the attorneys. And that's when the prosecutors and Trump's lawyers each get 30 minutes to ask questions to try to understand a little bit more about these jurors, a little bit more about their viewpoints -- their views on both how they would interpret evidence whether they could separate credibility from likability, and whether they could -- from Trump's perspective, whether they have any sort of an obvious views about the former president.

So that process we saw yesterday take place, which helped get down to the seven at the time. And then this will now begin again as they try to build up this box against to the full jury.

COATES: And remember, we have yet to see any strikes right now that usually after the 30-minute question begins by the different counsel. We haven't heard directly from Donald Trump today, though we've heard from his fundraising arm though.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Laura, we saw the fundraising text messages that I just stormed into court. He also last week said or Monday's that he just stormed out of court. And he's saying join me. I'm springing the fight, you know, my gloves are coming off.

This is obviously part of their tactic in the campaigning is to use these court appearances. One for him to talk which he's not today, but also to fundraise often to try to get support off of, to try to build on the poll numbers. One of the things to keep in mind here is that yes.

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During the primary season when he was getting indicted, these various criminal trials were happening. He did see a boost in polls. He did see a boost in fundraising. But one thing that some of his senior advisors are concerned about, even if they say publicly that this is going to help them is how this is actually going to play out in a general election.

We are in completely uncharted territory and you're trying to get voters who are really not in your base. You're looking for voters who are not that, you know, far right. They're people who are more middle of the road. Does an eight week potentially criminal trial actually help this at all? Or is this going to hurt him in the end?

COATES: And by the way we thought that they could have opening arguments as early as this coming Monday, but now you don't have one less juror at this moment in time. And also, at the very beginning of today, nearly half said they could not be impartial. That is significant. It was on probably what happened on Monday, but this can be very difficult still, Kara (Ph)?

HOLMES: Right. I mean, I think that is the key number as this plays out because, you know, we were able to get seven jurors initially from that first pool. Now it's a similar number. But if a lot of these jurors get strapped for cause, meaning that based on their answers, the judge feels like there can't be fair and impartial.

And if they have to bring in another panel, then we go through this process all over again. And every time you do that, there's the risk that you lose a lot of people who say they can't be fair and impartial, and then you have even fewer people to pull from.

COATES: And remember, Dana, they only have a remaining four strikes per each side right now, a total of 10 peremptory challenges are allowed. And they already use six and justice week alone. So, whoever ahead, they'll think about that.

BASH: Yeah. Fascinating. Thank you so much to all three of you. Joining me now, former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams, and Jury Consultant Linda Moreno. Linda, I want to start with you. This is the kind of thing you do for a living, trying to kind of game out who the best person is to have on a jury for the client that you're hired to represent.

Give us a sense of based on your expertise, how you think it is going -- given the extraordinary challenges of finding jurors who say they can be impartial. And the defendant is Donald J. Trump.

LINDA MORENO, LAWYER AND JURY CONSULTANT: It's good to be with you, Dana. It's extraordinarily challenging and difficult. But really, it's to be expected in all high-profile cases. Jury selection can take a very long time. I was astonished at the number of jurors that were already selected. And I was not surprised when some came back the next day -- today when they were issues.

And I think you can expect to see that really going forward until the whole entire jury selection is completed. And don't forget that also includes six alternate and each alternate under the New York criminal corporate law, each alternate also you get two strikes to peremptory challenges. So, I am now of the opinion, this is not going to be completed by Monday.

And profiling jurors -- profiling jurors can be both -- can be of great value, but it can also be dangerous. And I would probably say that the most opinionated the kind of juror is not going to be a juror who survives. But someone who is somewhat in the middle of the road, as I understand the cases now.

BASH: Elliot, I want to ask you about something that we understand from our colleagues in the courtroom is happening as we speak. Juror number four. This is a juror who is talking to the judge as we speak -- as I said, because there are questions about whether everything that he said before he was picked was accurate.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right. He is not going to be a juror in this trial for a couple of reasons. Number one, you can see the Judge Merchan is trying very hard to ensure that the proceedings be as fair to Donald Trump as possible. And having a juror that knowingly, apparently might have been untruthful on his questionnaire -- his questions, right? They're sort of the kiss of death in this juror. That's point one.

Point two, as the juror was asked to come in early this morning and was apparently reluctant to come into court. Any chance they had of rehabilitating this juror and asking him questions and getting him to say he's honest, we're sort of out the door. So, I think the judge is going through it right now. But in the interest of caution, I don't see this juror getting on this trial.

BASH: And Linda, this is kind of what jury selection is all about right, to read out people like this.

MORENO: Exactly. And I anticipate you're going to see more of this. I would agree with counsel that this juror will not survive. I think that Judge Merchan is being careful. He's making a record that's very good for both sides, but I don't believe he'll survive either.

BASH: So, I just want to put up on the screen some of the very general and generic information, pieces of information that we have. This is just what these jurors' jobs are. Salesperson, corporate lawyer, IT consulting, although that's juror number four. We'll see if that remains. English teacher, software, engineer, civil litigator. Linda, you I know believe that the notion of lawyers being on a jury is unusual, which I wasn't really aware of. And also, could have a specific impact on the case ultimately. What impact is that?

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MORENO: Well, I think that, you know, the folklore is usually don't want lawyers on your jury. And I'm speaking from a defense perspective because of course, lawyers are going to be asked in the deliberating room by other jurors, well, what do you think of the law? What do you think of this element of the jury instruction. And so, they become kind of a power broker.

But here, I think that both sides might be -- this might be to their advantage because here, there are some nuances. There are some issues, technical and legal issues regarding some of the elements like intent. And perhaps, both sides would benefit from some clear thinking on those issues. And it just always done it, it depends on the case. That's why profiling, as I said, it's both advantageous but dangerous as well. It's always about the specifics of the case.

BASH: Linda was coming at it, Elliot, from the defense perspective. You are obviously from the other perspective. You were nodding your head. I should call you counsel. But I actually do want to just turn to another really important issue before the court and before the judge today, and that is that gag order on Donald Trump. He put on his social media platform yesterday. They are catching undercover liberal activist lying to the judge in order to get on the Trump jury.

WILLIAMS: He is baiting this judge into acting and thumbing his nose at the system. However, it is -- it is not entirely straightforward under New York law, what happens next? And there's -- it's not to say that this is so remarkable. The simple fact is you can't just throw him in jail. Number one, the judge has to have a hearing regardless of what the judge chooses to do. You have to bring the defendant in for a hearing.

Now, the question is, is it a civil proceeding where you're seeking to compel him to behave better in the future? Or is it a criminal proceeding where you're going to lock him up in jail for things he's already done? And there's pitfalls to both of those approaches. What's telling is that the judge has waited five days is not having a hearing, I think until the 23rd, which is quite significant. He's letting us all stay out there.

Now that again, getting back to what we were talking about before is a way of perhaps trying to be more fair to Donald Trump than the judge needs to be, just in the interest of caution. But the idea that the judge is going to wave a wand and throw him in jail, which I think many people think is simply not how it works, particularly in New York.

BASH: Yeah. And also, there's the delay factor.

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

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BASH: Yeah. OK. Elliot, thank you. Linda, thank you so much for your expertise. Up next. Much more on the Trump trial. And also, on his campaigns message to fellow Republicans, if you use my name to raise money, I get a cut. And later an American political dynasty, and a show of force for President Biden intended to make clear to voters. RFK Jr. may have the Kennedy name but does not represent the Kennedy legacy.

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BASH: And we do have breaking news. Another juror was just excused in the Trump hush money case. We were just talking about this juror before the break. Laura Coates, you're here with me. The judge said that that he is going to be excused. They are now down to five in panel jurors. And it's really interesting.

It is according to the prosecutors, Laura, that their research found that that juror showed records that he was arrested in the 90s for tearing down political advertisements. That's according to prosecutors again, not something that he shared during his jury selection process.

COATES: You know, one step forward now to jurors back as of yesterday. As of this morning, we had seven who are impaneled, only leaving 11 more to get that covered in 80, which includes the 12 that must be seated, plus the six alternates. Now you've got this discussion happening about juror number four. We know some of the details.

Remember, this is the one who found Trump fascinating and mysterious. And some would argue that that was alluring to Donald Trump as a defendant to have this particular person on the jury. There's some expression. He was annoyed about the amount of public information was out about him.

But also remember the jury questionnaire tries to get at various information about individual jurors and try to not have surprise moments. They're not surprised or caught flat footed about the nature of what is being said, particularly after they are already seated in the jury.

Remember, they only have a limited number of strikes in as the defense counsel and the prosecution, they want to be able to preserve their peremptory challenges. A fancy way of saying, I can get rid of you for any reason I want from my own prerogative based reasons as long as it's not based on race or ethnicity or gender.

And so, they've used their strikes believing that they wanted this particular composition so far, and now they have two less people who will be there. The judge saying, he cannot be there on Monday which was when they thought oral -- I mean open, which are going to actually start.

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Of the same journey we believe is the one whose wife apparently had what's known as a deferred prosecution agreement, which is what happens when somebody is charged with a crime. And the prosecutors' office decides to offer them a probationary sentence where they don't have to serve any jail time. And they actually have to have certain conditions met.

And if they meet those conditions during the duration of the time set, they then can have the prosecution go away entirely. That apparently also happened in the 90s. And we're discovering all of this now, and not the 11th hour, but certainly at a time when there's already seven and now five.

BASH: And now five, and the process continues to get that number back up to 18. Laura, thank you so much. And Donald Trump may be stuck inside a New York City courtroom. But of course, the 2024 campaign is not to talk about the former president's courtroom slash campaign strategy and much more. I'm joined by my great panel of reporters, CNN's Gloria Borger, The Washington Post's Leigh Ann Caldwell, and Margaret Talev of Axios.

Let's just start with this breaking news. This is so fascinating because these are potential jurors. They are citizens. They are voters. And the machinations that they have to go through on the prosecutor and defense side and the judges well, of course, to find exactly the right group of people. We knew it was going to be hard. I don't think we realized it was going to be this intense and this multilayer.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, a day ago, we thought it was going to be easier.

BASH: Yeah.

BORGER: And now you realize how difficult it is. First of all, from the jurors' point of view, imagine how unnerving this is. You go in there. You're going to serve jury duty. And then suddenly, it's the president -- the former president of the United States.

BASH: Today apparently is awake.

BORGER: Right.

BASH: And gross, according to our colleagues.

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BORGER: And it's nerving because it can also be dangerous, and you're supposed to be anonymous. And there's a bunch of information that's being revealed about you. And these days, as we all know from Google, you can piece information together and people can figure out who you are. And that can be threatening to people. And that's what happened today with one of the jurors who asked to be excused. And so, I think it's a very, very difficult situation.

MARGARET TALEV, SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR, AXIOS: You've also got -- I mean, for most of the last few days, I've been really interested in the jury questionnaire. And I think it's question number 10, which is, what media do you consume? And what social media sites do you consume?

And it's, they offer about 19 choices. It's everything from the New York Times to Newsmax, it's TikTok, it's Trump's social. And there's a lot of slots for other and you say what you're reading, what you consume, what you use, are also -- I don't consume any news is another choice.

And that these are all the fact that they're part of the questionnaire acknowledges that the news and information you do consume that you seek out or your comfort space, could correlate very highly to your view of all of this to begin with. So that is the context in which we had been thinking about the fact that we're days into the process and only a third done, right?

Now comes this new twist, which is like, are you going to have the jurors who do make the cut, dropping like flies. And I think it raises questions about the future of the jury system or raises questions about how you control privacy in this era where everything's knowable instantly.

BASH: Yeah. And because an anonymity is so important.

BORGER: They did in the E. Jean Carroll case.

BASH: Yeah, they did.

BORGER: Do recall, so it can be done.

BASH: That's true. Let's shift gears a bit and to talk more about the actual campaign trail and more specifically, Donald Trump and his campaign and what they are doing when it comes to fundraising. Our colleagues obtained part of a -- of a letter that the Trump campaign sent to candidates and campaign committees who are using the president's name, image and likeness. And they want to cut.

This is what it says that they want a minimum of 5 percent of all fundraising solicitations. Any split that is higher than 5 percent will be seen favorably by the RNC and President Trump's campaign and is routinely reported to the highest levels of the leaderships -- leadership within both organizations.

I mean, there's so much to unpack here that is such a rich paragraph. One of our colleagues said, it's basically like, you've such a nice campaign. It would be really -- it would be a shame if your campaign had anything happened to it, wouldn't it?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, EARLY 202 CO-AUTHOR, THE WASHINGTON POST: Oh my God. So, this is not really unexpected. The Trump campaign is also looking for money in any way that it can find money. It is in a huge fundraising hole compared to President Biden. It has half as much cash on hand as President Biden does.

The RNC had been suffering in fundraising. The RNC had been paying for a lot of Trump's legal bills, which is -- and also one of his Super PACs have been paying for his legal bills. And so, he has a lot of money that he needs, not only to run a presidential campaign, but to help him with these multiple court cases too. And now, I guess he is asking all the candidates up and down the ballot to help him out with that.

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BORGER: Isn't a presidential candidate supposed to help candidates --

BASH: Suppose to go the other way around.

BORGER: I mean, this is just --

BASH: Traditionally it does.

BORGER: You know, this is just the reverse. This is just like Donald Trump saying, I want to cut. And, you know -- CALDWELL: That's his whole business model, though, right? He thinks he gives his name. He's licensing his name.

BORGER: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

TALEV: There were franchisees of the Congress, Senate and staying in local races.

BASH: All right, everybody. Up next, let the chips fall where they may. Speaker Mike Johnson is promising a vote on $61 billion in aid for Ukraine. Will it pass? And will it cost him his job? We'll talk about that next.

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