Donald Trump’s Jury Could Be a Problem for Alvin Bragg

The 12-person jury in former President Donald Trump’s hush money case is in place and expected to have a strong impact on the proceedings as both sides may begin presenting their cases next week.

Seven men and five women are partaking in the historic trial that began with jury selection Monday in New York City. Five alternate jurors are hoped by New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to be finalized Friday in order to begin deliberations on Monday as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records regarding a payment made to an adult-film star during his 2016 presidential election campaign.

Trump’s charges stem from hush money paid to Stormy Daniels during his first bid for the White House. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accuses the former president of attempting to conceal potentially adverse information from U.S. voters. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and maintains that he never had an affair with Daniels.

As the jury pool includes double the number of men compared to women, it provides Trump with perhaps a better outlook considering that men are generally more prone to support him than women.

A poll of 806 registered New York voters conducted by the Siena College Research Institute between February 12 and 14 showed that 50 percent of men feel favorably toward Trump, compared to just 28 percent of women.

Of those polled, 49 percent of men and 29 percent of women expressed support for Trump in this year’s election, including 14 percent of men who said a Trump conviction would make them more likely to support him. About 10 percent of women said the same.

But New York City is more liberal than the state. Exit polls from the Biden-Trump 2020 election showed 76 percent of support from New York City resident for the Democrat, according to CNN—about 18 points higher support than Biden received in areas like upstate New York.

Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a legal analyst and former Manhattan chief assistant district attorney, told Newsweek via email that as in any trial, the jury is more important than the prosecutor and the judge.

“It’s about the jury because the jury and the jury alone decides the facts and whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty,” she said. “The jury and the jury alone, whether a prosecutor has proven each end every element of each and every crime beyond a reasonable doubt.

“The judge informs the jury of the legal standards that should be applied to the facts, but it’s the jury all the way. They are the whole show.”

Whether the male-female disparity on this jury will have an impact is yet to be seen.

“Juries are unpredictable, and the prosecution has to run the proverbial table in order to get a conviction here,” New York-based attorney Brad Moss told Newsweek via email. “However, the current jury composition appears to be a decent reflection of the populace of Manhattan, and expectations that larger political trends alone will influence their decision is pure speculation. People take jury duty seriously.”

A Yahoo! News survey of 1,746 U.S. adults conducted between April 11 and 15 found that women were more likely to consider falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star as a “serious crime,” outnumbering men, 62 percent to 51 percent.

Men in the same survey were much more likely to view Trump’s other alleged crimes, including possession of classified documents and attempting to overthrow the 2020 election, as serious crimes.

Jay Oliver, a conservative political commentator and host at LI News Radio, told Newsweek that Bragg is not at a disadvantage with the jury because he has the ultimate advantage: The case is being tried in Manhattan.

“Donald Trump stated a long time ago he doesn’t consider New York to be home anymore, it’s now Florida,” Oliver said. “With that being said, New York is pro-Democrat, and NYC even more so.

“Regardless of the numbers of the jury as far as men and women, there is still plenty of distaste in general for the former president. It still comes down to evidence and the convincing of 12 individuals to make the right choice. The judicial process once again is under the spotlight.”

Denny Salas, a political strategist and senior vice president at New York-based Gotham Government Relations, disagreed, but for a different reason.

“We know that social attitudes have evolved around traditional views about sex work, and his defense attorneys only need one juror to raise reasonable doubt,” Salas told Newsweek via email. “Moreover, we’ve seen polls over the last couple of years in which men have tended to favor Donald Trump in the presidential election.

“We could see Trump’s attorneys appeal to their empathies around intrusion by the government in someone’s personal life as a strategy. The key for Bragg will be in presenting a strong case that focuses on the crime itself, the hush money being the illegal act, not the underlying reason for the payment.”