Donald Trump’s attacks on witnesses have garnered much attention, but it’s his attacks on jurors that are “worse than anything else,” former prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin said on a CNN panel Thursday.
“I think judges are especially concerned about jurors much more even than witnesses, especially public figures like already seen,” Toobin said. He added that jurors can pull out of the trial, which could worry Judge Juan Merchan because “this is not a jury that has been sequestered, right?”
While the former president has mostly gone after potential witnesses, such as former attorney Michael Cohen, he has also gone after jurors, suggesting they are “95% Democrats” and too liberal to judge his case fairly. One juror already pulled out after saying she feared the public attention, while Trump was earlier admonished for muttering in court during jury selection.
“I think Merchan was somewhat sympathetic to the Michael Cohen issue because Michael Cohen has been beating the hell out of Trump and there is a sense of fairness about the response,” Toobin said. “But that line about the jury, that’s the thing that’s worse than anything else Trump has said, because that means he has been looking into the juror’s backgrounds. That means he has reached conclusions about them.”
Trump has already been found to have violated his gag order and hit with a contempt fine of $9,000. But it’s hard for a judge to control what goes on outside their courtroom, former federal judge Nancy Gertner said on the panel.
“The judge is not supposed to be concerned about the give and take in the public arena, he’s trying to sort of hermetically seal his courtroom,” she noted. She added that Cohen can say whatever he wants, although it is probable that prosecutors are calling up his lawyers to ask him to “please shut up.”