Is Donald Trump receiving a fair trial?
Former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial continues today in New York. It’s his third week in what he says is a cold courtroom. So I’m going to go into this trial. I’m going to sit in a freezing cold ice box for 8 hours, 9 hours or so. The 45th president faces 34 counts of falsifying business records. The charges stem from a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. To cover up an alleged affair, Trump denies the affair and has pleaded not guilty. A recent CNN poll, conducted a few days after jury selection started, shows that only 13% believe that Trump is being treated fairly. I think the people in America, people who are watching that to the extent people are, I think they see that is a little bit unfair to the former president. That poll also shows that the country is divided over whether the former president is being treated more harshly or more leniently than other defendants. On Tuesday, the judge fined Trump for repeatedly violating his gag order and instructed the former president to take down several offending posts from social media and his campaign website. This order itself is to try to preserve the integrity of this trial. You don’t want to taint the jurors. You don’t want the jurors to have some outside influence. The political impact of Trump’s criminal trial is difficult to predict as he vies for another four years in the White House. Reporting in Washington, I’m Julia Benbrook.