Former President Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial is taking “unusual” measures, according to former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on Friday.
Trump is facing 34 felony charges regarding falsified business records over hush money payments that were made to former adult film star Stormy Daniels weeks before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels alleged that she had an affair with Trump a decade prior, which he has denied. Prosecutors led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg allege the payments were part of a scheme to stop potentially damaging stories about Trump from becoming public. In addition, prosecutors allege that the former president reimbursed his former lawyer Michael Cohen via a series of checks for “hush money” payments made to Daniels. Trump, meanwhile, has pleaded not guilty in the case.
In an order published on Thursday, Judge Juan Merchan granted motions put forward by prosecutors on February 22 to restrict the disclosure of jurors’ names to parties involved in the case, and to limit who knew their home or business addresses to either party’s lead counsel. In his ruling, he referenced “the likelihood of bribery, jury tampering, or of physical injury or harassment.”
Trump’s legal team accepted the two motions, on the proviso that the jurors’ names could be disclosed to other legal staff and consultants involved in the trial, which is due to start on March 25.
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/Getty Images
Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney and frequent Trump critic, took to X, formerly Twitter, on Friday to share a video discussing the ruling that the jury will be anonymous, adding that it is “unusual” considering the defendant is a former president.
“This jury will be anonymous so Donald Trump and the prosecutors will not be permitted to disclose their names, their identities to anyone. That’s unusual, not unprecedented. You may have heard me say in the past that in my 30 years as a federal prosecutor I only had two cases with anonymous juries and each one was the RICO prosecution of what was one of the most dangerous criminal organization in Washington D.C.,” Kirschner said.
He also stressed that the case he worked on involved a defendant “so dangerous” that it warranted the measure of an anonymous jury.
“They were so dangerous that the judge ordered that those jurors would remain anonymous in those two cases and now those extraordinary juror protection measures have to be put in place for the criminal trial for a former president of the United States,” Kirschner added.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s spokesperson via email for comment.
The Thursday order also stressed that the parties involved in the trial submit “proposed neutral explanations” for the jurors as to why their names and addresses were being withheld that “minimize any potential prejudice to either party.”
However, the courtroom would not be closed to the public throughout the trial and access to the court “will not be tempered in any way as a result of these protective measures.”
Meanwhile, a third request from prosecutors asked the court “to explicitly provide notice to [the] defendant that any harassing or disruptive conduct that threatens the safety or integrity of the jury may result in forfeiture of the defendant’s access to juror names.”
Trump’s team asked Merchan to reject the request. The judge reserved his right to issue the warning pending a decision on another request to restrict extrajudicial statements about the trial.
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