Former President Donald Trump has responded to legal threats against him by claiming the system is corrupt and rigged, and that various judges, prosecutors, and opposing attorneys who have been involved in actions against him are biased and hate him politically.
He did this in the civil rape case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, claiming that Senior District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial, couldn't possibly handle the trial fairly because he was appointed by President Bill Clinton.
However, behind the scenes, Trump's legal team was undercutting this message by making the exact opposite argument during jury selection, reported POLITICO's Kyle Cheney on Wednesday.
Specifically, while jurors were being considered, newly released court proceedings show that Carroll's defense team sought to disqualify one juror in particular: a 31-year-old security guard from the Bronx who claimed that he gets most of his news from podcasts — in particular the podcast of Tim Pool, a pro-Trump right-wing provocateur who once received an invite to the Trump White House in 2019.
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"A juror's political affiliation is not grounds for dismissal, even in cases involving a political figure," wrote Trump's lawyers, asserting that disqualification was only necessary if jurors were members of a group "widely considered to hold extreme political views," like the Proud Boys or the QAnon movement. Simply listening to a right-wing podcaster, they continued, "is not sufficient ground on which to infer bias. Under the Plaintiff's logic, police officers cannot serve on criminal cases, or jurors interested in women's rights cannot serve on sex discrimination cases. The law does not permit cause excusals based on such broad judgments about jurors' ability to serve fairly."
Ultimately, the Tim Pool fan was allowed to serve on the jury — and after fewer than three hours of deliberation, joined a unanimous verdict finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, with damages totaling $5 million.
Trump faces a number of other legal challenges, including criminal charges in Manhattan for bookkeeping fraud over his alleged $130,000 hush payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, and multiple other state and federal investigations.
