Hundreds of potential candidates have been summoned to court so that prosecutors and defense lawyers can choose 12 w ho will decide the fate of Donald J. Trump.
The first criminal trial ever of an American president will begin Monday as prosecutors and defense lawyers meet in a courtroom in New York to start selecting the jury that will decide Donald J. Trump’s fate.
Mr. Trump has been charged with 34 felonies, falsifying documents to conceal a sex scandal involving a porn star by Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.
It is one of four indictments the former president and presumptive Republican nominee faces ahead of presidential elections this year.
Jury selection could last two weeks or more and the trial go on for several weeks into June. Mr. Trump, 77, is expected to be in the courtroom for much of it.
In 2016, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels in hush money to stop her talking about a story of having had sex with Mr. Trump a decade earlier.
Mr. Trump has denied the liaison. But prosecutors say that he falsified a series of documents to hide reimbursements to Mr. Cohen.
The 12 jurors, once selected, will have to judge Mr. Cohen’s story themselves: He is expected to be the prosecution’s star witness, confronting a boss he once idolized and now despises.
