No Justice For The Donald: Voters Say Trump Cannot Get A Fair Trial Because Of A Liberal-Loaded Manhattan Jury, Daily Mail Poll Shows
- Americans by a wide margin say liberal-leaning jury cannot try Trump fairly
- Judge Merchan says jurors cannot be rejected simply for voting Democrat
Voters by a wide margin say Donald Trump cannot get a fair trial in New York because its liberal-leaning jurors are biased against him, a DailyMail.com/TIPP Poll shows.
Fully 49 percent of voters say the jury is loaded against Trump, while 37 percent say the Republican can get a fair hearing.
Another 14 percent said they were not sure.
The survey of more than 1,400 adults comes as porn star Stormy Daniels reveals sordid evidence about a sexual encounter with the former president in the fourth week of his hush money trial.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to Manhattan prosecutors' charges he falsified business records to cover up his former lawyer's $130,000 payment to Daniels, 45, for her silence before the 2016 election.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, on Tuesday described her 2006 encounter with Trump, 77, in unflattering terms.
She told jurors she tried not to think about the sex while it took place and feared it would become public.
Trump denies having sex with Daniels. She is set to continue testifying on Thursday.
Though the spotlight is on Trump and the adult entertainer, the real decision makers are the 12 members of the jury.
They were chosen in April after lawyers spent a week weeding out bad candidates for the first-ever trial of a former American president.
They include a software engineer, a security engineer, a teacher, a speech therapist, multiple lawyers, an investment banker and a retired wealth manager.
The process of picking a jury is a critical phase in any criminal trial, but especially so when the defendant is the presumptive Republican nominee in an upcoming presidential election.
Trump's lawyers are understood to worry that jurors from liberal-leaning New York City are keen to convict Trump, a polarizing figure.
New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly for President Joe Biden over Trump in the 2020 election.
The vote was more decisive in Manhattan, where the trial is happening — 86.7 percent of its voters backed Biden.
Potential jurors were randomly selected from voter rolls and other state records.
They were grilled on their social media posts, personal lives and political views as the lawyers and judge searched for any biases.
Justice Juan Merchan, overseeing the case, indicated he would not disqualify people based solely on whether they leaned Republican or Democratic.
One juror, a man who works in investment banking, described himself as 'ambivalent' about Trump, but acknowledged he achieved 'some good' for the country.
One woman made it on to the panel despite calling Trump 'selfish and self-serving.'
One potential juror was dismissed after expressing doubt about her ability to be fair following disclosure of details about her identity.
Another was knocked back over concerns that some of his answers in court may have been inaccurate.
According to our survey, nearly half of Americans say the jury's political leaning means Trump cannot get a fair hearing.
Men and white people felt more strongly than women, black people and Hispanics that the outcome is loaded against Trump.
Unsurprisingly, there was a massive partisan difference.
Fully 79 percent of republican voters said Trump wasn't getting a fair hearing, compared to 25 percent of Democrats.
The nationwide survey has a +/-2.7 percent error margin. It was carried out earlier this month by TIPP, which has been noted for the accuracy of its polls.
The hush money case is widely seen as less consequential than three other criminal prosecutions Trump faces, but it is the only one certain to go to trial before the election.
The other cases charge Trump with trying to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat and mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all three.
In Florida, where Trump is accused of illegally keeping classified documents, a judge decided to indefinitely postpone the trial on Tuesday, greatly reducing the odds he will face a jury in the two federal case before the election in November.