Special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday filed a motion that urged U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to put guardrails in place to protect the possible jurors in Donald Trump’s election-subversion case.
Former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner suggested Smith hadn’t just “taken off the gloves” with the move. It “looks like he’s boxed them up, taped up the box, and sent them to long-term storage,” Kirschner said on a new episode of his “Justice Matters” podcast.
Smith encouraged Chutkan to streamline the jury selection process with a questionnaire for potential jurors, ban their details from being public, and prohibit direct contact between attorneys and jurors.
The motion referred to Republican 2024 front-runner Trump’s attack on social media of a court official in his civil fraud trial in New York, which prompted a judge to slap the former president with a gag order.
Recognizing your solid points: it is because this case is so high profile that you can continue to find jurors. People will be willing to become jurors even if it means they become martyrs because this would fix them on the right side of history.
The problem with that is (a) finding enough of them that are willing to take the risk, and (b) having them not be weeded out during the jury selection process for being too biased against Trump. I do agree that some would be willing to do it, but I’m skeptical about whether they’d be able to get the chance.