'Last piece' of jury selection is people who are 'willing to convict': Charles Coleman

And then there were 77 New Yorkers have been seated in the hush money slash election interference trial against former President Donald Trump. Court is out of session today. It is Wednesday, but when Judge Marshawn returns tomorrow, only 11 more jurors need to be selected. Five more to fill out the jury box, along with six alternates. If they are found this week, the trial could begin at 9:30 on Monday morning. Joining us now, NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hilliard and former New York prosecutor and MSNBC legal analyst Charles Coleman Vaughn, It was a surprising turn yesterday because I was sitting on the show at 3:00. They had zero jurors. They dismissed everybody from Monday. And then all of a sudden at 3:30, there were three. And then a couple minutes later, there were six, and they ended the day with 7 jurors. How did that, How did that turn take place so fast? Happy hour. I mean, look, all of a sudden we walked out with 7 jurors, which means we’re just five early happy hour. Just FYI. Look at here. We’ve got now at this point in time, four men, three women, two attorneys, a salesman on college, nurse, IT consultant, teacher, software engineer. We have folks from all over Manhattan. We have at least one black woman, an Asian American man here. So this is New York City, and it’s going inside of the courtroom. Who’s the jury for? A person. The jury for a person is you’re putting Irishman. Irishman. Yeah. Is a business owner, right? Or, yeah. And he is 28, a young man. He’s married, but with no kids. So that tells us nothing at all. But that’s who he is. No, these are the folks that are going to hold the fate of Donald Trump in their hands here. And this is a moment in time here when you are looking at a particular question that caught my attention yesterday was the number of folks that said that they would be able to be fair and impartial towards Donald Trump because they didn’t hold strong opinions about him, about one out of every five individuals that walked. That is actually as surprising as as people may expect because I think that there are, there’s a definitely a portion of this country who follows politics very closely. There are a lot of people who know who Donald Trump is, but I think there are a great number of people who feel a little bit more dispassionately, dispassionately about politics than others do. And and so I’m not, I’m not entirely surprised by that. Charles, let’s talk about what kind of jurors both sides want here. I know we’ve talked about it in broad terms, but I’m hoping that you can just kind of focus in and and tell me the kind of jurors described. Generally speaking, the kind of jurors that the prosecution would want here and the kind of jurors that the defense wants with the acknowledgement that the defense only needs 1 juror, 1 juror to have a hung jury here. You know, Katie, when I was listening to the descriptions around the different jurors that have already been selected, the two things that stuck out to me were the fact that there are going to be attorneys on this jury. Any lawyer who has conducted trials will tell you that you typically don’t want to have other lawyers on the jury because most of them will try to outsmart who you’re presenting the case to. But in a case like this, I actually do think that having lawyers on the jury plays to the advantage of the prosecution, because they will be able to determine whether the prosecution has in fact met its burden beyond a reasonable doubt. And dispassionately, it would hope, you would hope, look at this case and make proper assessments. If I’m the defense, I want people who seem like they are on the fringes of society. And what I mean by that is maybe they’re entrepreneurs. They’re not necessarily working for other people in the sense of following rules. They can create their own rules and they have a little bit more give for people who are going to work every day understanding the rules of society, understanding the rules of a particular workplace, for example. These are the people who are going to be more inclined to say, look, even if I may not necessarily like the rule, even if I may not necessarily agree with the law or think that it’s a big deal, I can understand the notion that the evidence presented in front of me suggest that you have broken the law and I need to hold you accountable for that, regardless of my feelings. And so that’s how that breaks down. The last piece is going to be typically people who are willing to convict. Now, I don’t want to sound sexist because I’ve said this before and it’s been a thing. But in the past, typically when you are a prosecutor and you think about cases, you’re not always thinking about women as being people who are usually willing to convict, primarily because they get in the jury box. And sometimes they like to play social worker and think, what’s the best way that we can figure this out without necessarily sending someone to jail? But in a case like this, where the defendant is Donald Trump and they have likely heard at least something around his wrongdoing with respect to sexual assault accusations and the other things that he’s done and maybe perhaps the connection between his administration and Dobbs and the elimination of role, you may think about that in terms of somebody who is more likely to convict the former president. All right, let me also mention the this stack of papers I was just handed. This is the latest filing in this case, the hush money election interference case. This is the Sandoval notice that the DA’s yeah the DA’s office has has submitted this is what they want to use as evidence against Donald Trump in the trial. Explain Correct. And on the same day that they sent them this notice, Trump’s legal team actually responded with a letter to the judge saying we want to essentially restrict them from being able to use any of Donald Trump’s prior criminal activity that has already been determined by previous courts as part of this case, right. They do not want to taint the jury’s image of Donald Trump. And So what the district attorney’s office is requesting is that they are able to bring up as evidence in front of this jury here, not only if we go back to the decision from just this February as it related to the civil fraud trial and the fact that Donald Trump had repeatedly engaged in financial fraud. They also want to bring up the decision on E Jean Carroll and the fact that he had engaged in sexual assault and the fact that he had defamed her. And so be up to the judge to hear this. It could be Friday. It could be Monday before they actually have those opening statements in which they hear the District Attorney present those arguments as to why this is germane to the case they want to present. It’s going to bring it up Friday, if we are fortunate, and get done early on Friday. That’s what he said. So you have the James case. You have the aging Carroll case. You also have the Trump Foundation here. I don’t see Trump University, which is interesting. I see the Allen Weisselberg stuff. And then there’s also one that we had to look up. This is Trump versus Clinton. It referenced the case in the filing that refers to a legal action initiated by Trump against Hillary Clinton and several others involving allegations that Clinton and her associates engaged in a conspiracy that negatively impacted Trump’s political and personal interests. That’s interesting that they would bring up that one, Charles, if you can quickly. Why would they bring up a case like that? Well, I think they want to basically create a pattern of showing that Donald Trump is very much so invested in this political image. Because part of the theory of the case is that Donald Trump paid this hush money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal when he did, in large part because he wanted to avoid further fallout after the Access Hollywood tape. So again, to my previous point about women on the jury, they are going to try to make the case, number one, that this is someone who has a disdain for women and this dealings with women, and that actually shows itself. And that further buttresses the notion that in, in this instance, he was so concerned about how this was going to impact his chances in 2016, if you will. I’m sorry. In 20. Yeah. In 2016, of being president, that he wanted to try and do anything he could to put himself in the best position, even if it meant paying the hush money to cover up this affair that he had had with a former player. OK. Charles Coleman, Yvonne Hillier, Thank you very much.