The claim: Trump was found guilty by a jury stacked with Biden voters
A June 13 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) from conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson makes a claim about the political affiliations of the jurors who convicted former President Donald Trump.
“Trump was found guilty by a jury stacked with Biden voters and the media is too happy to call out the obvious corruption,” the post reads. “At Tucker Carlson Network, we’ll never do that. Join now to fight back.”
The post was shared more than 6,000 times in two weeks.
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Our rating: False
There’s no evidence to support this claim since there’s no way to know how the jurors have voted. Attorneys were not allowed to ask them about their political party affiliations. The jurors’ identities have not been revealed, and the few details shared about them indicate they held mixed views about Trump.
Each member of the jury was agreed upon by defense and prosecution
On May 30, a New York jury unanimously found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Several days before Trump stood trial, Judge Juan Merchan released a questionnaire to be used for jury selection.
Trump’s lawyers had requested that jurors’ political party affiliations be made public. In a letter attached to the questionnaire, Merchan denied that request.
“Contrary to defense counsel’s arguments, the purpose of jury selection is not to determine whether a prospective juror likes or does not like one of the parties,” Merchan wrote.
Jurors typically are not asked about their political affiliations, religions or sexual orientations, Molly Murphy, a trial consultant and mediator who has worked on hundreds of state and federal cases, told USA TODAY. But the questionnaire did include other questions to help paint the picture of each juror’s political stance.
The questions ranged from whether a prospective juror or a close relative ever worked for Trump’s presidential campaign to whether they had attended an anti-Trump rally or campaign event.
The few details gleaned during jury selection and reported by media indicated that the jurors varied in their stances, with few showing strong opinions about the former president.
One juror said he follows Trump on social media and read his book “The Art of the Deal,” and another said she thinks “President Trump speaks his mind” and would prefer that to someone “who’s in office and you don’t know what they’re doing behind the scenes.”
Only two expressed significant disagreements with Trump, Forbes reported. One said she did not agree with “a lot of his politics and his decisions as a president.” Another juror said she did not like the president’s “persona,” calling him “selfish and self-serving,” USA TODAY reported. However, both said they could still be impartial.
The jurors’ identities have not been made public. Their names were only known by those involved in the case.
“Even for all the people that were in the courtroom, they don’t know their names,” Murphy said. “It’s all by the jury badge number, and somebody would have to really break into the court system to get that information.”
Carlson’s post offers no evidence to support the “Biden voters” description. USA TODAY reached out to Carlson’s team for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
Cynthia Godsoe, a professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, told USA TODAY that both the prosecutors and the defense team agreed to each juror. Trump’s team “had the resources and the time and the ability” to research each prospective candidate, Godsoe said.
For example, the defense looked into social media posts from the prospective jurors to find signs of bias. Two men were dismissed for posts that criticized the former president.
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Both the prosecution and the defense teams had a set number of challenges they could use against a juror, Murphy and Godsoe said.
The defense “used their challenges to dismiss people they thought were particularly maybe likely to fight against him,” said Godsoe. “That’s just the way it always goes.”
Our fact-check sources:
- Cynthia Godsoe, June 21, Phone interview with USA TODAY
- Molly Murphy, June 24, Phone interview with USA TODAY
- Supreme Court of the State of New York, April 8, Trump Hush Money Juror Questionnaire
- Politico, April 8, QAnon in, political party out: Judge finalizes juror questionnaire for Trump hush-money case
- CBS News, April 22, What to know about the jurors in Trump’s “hush money” trial in New York
- Forbes, May 30, Here’s What We Know About The 12 Jurors In Trump’s Hush Money Trial
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