Legal

The former president now has a 12-person jury — and prosecutors renewed their bid to hold him in contempt.

Former President Donald Trump attends his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to an affair with a porn star, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, on April 18, 2024. | Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

By Erica Orden and Ben Feuerherd

04/18/2024 09:06 PM EDT

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NEW YORK — In its first week, Donald Trump’s criminal trial is forcing the former president, a man who famously surrounds himself with sycophants, to sit quietly and listen to the unfiltered opinions of those typically kept at arm’s-length: People he might call his “haters.”

During jury selection, Trump has heard himself described by those under consideration as racist and sexist and a narcissist. He’s been presented with social media posts calling for officials to “lock him up.” He’s been told, to his face, that he’s “very selfish and self-serving.”

And through it all, Trump has been required to remain seated, not gesturing, not talking and not using his phone. He has not even been allowed to adjust the temperature a few degrees in a courtroom he described as “freezing.”

To top it off, some of those people — including the one who called him selfish and said she outright dislikes him — are now members of the jury of 12 Manhattanites who will decide whether to convict him of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal.

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