The 1530 room on the 15th floor of the courthouse building that houses the New York County Supreme Court is, starting this Monday, the stage for a political and legal earthquake in history. Like many shocks felt across the United States over the past nine years, Donald Trump sits at the epicenter, and it is impossible to predict in advance how far his impact will go.
In a corner of Centre Street in lower Manhattan, at 9:30 in the morning, the first steps toward selecting a jury begin for the first criminal case against a former president. A man who also remains the de facto Republican nominee for the November election and replays his struggle with Joe Biden, but who in the coming weeks, six to eight depending on estimates, will have to be in court every workday except Wednesdays, not campaigning but facing trial instead.
The case that will go down in history is one where political life overlaps with intimate and sensational elements. At its core are the $130,000 that Trump paid to silence Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who claims she had a sexual relationship with the then real estate mogul and television personality in 2006, prior to the 2016 election.
The payment made in October 2016 by Michael Cohen, who was Trump’s lawyer and fixer at the time, was not illegal in itself. Yet the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, convinced a grand jury last year that the way Trump reimbursed Cohen and tracked the payments did cross a legal line.
Bragg argues that Trump violated federal and state election laws and tax laws, and did so with the intention of interfering in the election by concealing information that could damage his candidacy. With that argument, the district attorney elevated what would have been misdemeanors into crimes and charged the former president with the first 34 of the total 88 counts he faces across four criminal cases.
In the other three indictments, which deal with attempts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia and at the federal level, and his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House, Trump and his defense have so far managed to push back delays through an escalating series of appeals. Even a furious sprint in the last week with three motions in as many days, all denied, has failed to stall the New York case.
For a long time it was thought that this case was the weakest among the four because of the legal structure of the charges and the fact that a key prosecution witness is Cohen, a man who has already pleaded guilty and was jailed for lying and who the defense can portray as driven by vengeance against his former boss. But now, beyond its historic significance, it is seen as potentially the only case that could be resolved before the November election.
With that comes greater impact. In polls such as an Ipsos survey conducted for Politico in March, more than a third of independent voters say a guilty verdict would make them less likely to vote for Trump. While the Republican leads Biden in polls in key states, any shift among independents or undecideds could prove decisive.
What happens to Trump, who despite multiple court orders restraining him from commenting to the media continues to attack Bragg and the judge and even their families and potential witnesses, will rest in the hands of the 12 New York jurors who end up on the panel. Their selection, along with six alternates, from hundreds of summonsed potential jurors who will face a questionnaire of at least 42 questions from prosecutors and the defense, begins this Monday.
The process could extend beyond a week, and among the questions surfaced by the court’s questionnaire are whether the potential jurors have supported or been part of extremist groups such as QAnon, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, or Antifa, which media they rely on for information, and what views they hold about the judicial treatment of Trump.
Once the jury is seated, with identities kept private by order of Judge Merchan, the trial will begin. It will not be televised, but journalists will monitor it daily from room 58, with an additional 114 reporters expected in a secondary room.
The impact of the verdict will extend to the sentencing stage if guilt is found on any of the charges, and it raises the remote but real possibility that Trump could be imprisoned. Even so, such a development would not prevent him from continuing to campaign from prison or, in principle and under the Constitution at least, from serving as president.
Before that moment can arrive, Trump is expected to press the trial as a political and financial lever, as he has done in other civil cases in New York and in various appearances tied to the criminal cases.
Mails and text messages pushing for donations criticizing the “trial of the century” or labeling the process a sham continue to arrive. And this week on social media, Trump himself wrote that the trial should not start in the middle of his campaign, before alleging a supposed “witch hunt” and interference in the election.