Criminal defense attorney Bill Brennan, who previously represented former President Donald Trump, told CNN Monday that an Irish woman who went off about her dislike of Trump was not a “dangerous juror.”
Jury screening for Trump’s hush money trial began Monday as concerns emerge about jurors with bias against the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee. Brennan told CNN’s Jake Tapper that an outspoken woman who made her “hate” for Trump undoubtedly was less “dangerous” to the jury pool than someone less vocal.
“We had a lady come up as a prospective juror. I’ve been picking juries for about 35 years. Uh, she looked good to me, a lady in her mid-40s, uh, of Irish extraction. She spoke with a brogue, she worked in an Irish pub and on our questionnaire, questions 29 and 30 said, ‘Do you have any former — do you have any strong feelings about the former president and if so, would they affect your ability to be fair?’” Brennan said.
“And she checked them, so I said, ‘Well, ma’am, would they be positive or negative feelings?’ And she says, ‘Oh, I despise that man,’ he continued, imitating the woman’s Irish accent. “And I said, I guess it was late in the day, Jake, and I said, ‘Oh, come on, don’t sugarcoat things for me. Speak your mind.’ She says, ‘Oh, Speak me mind? I hate him!’”
Brennan was recalling a potential juror from the time he defended Trump during a tax fraud case against the Trump Organization in 2022. New York Justice Juan Merchan, the same judge presiding over the hush money case, fined the Trump Organization $1.6 million in Jan. 2023, according to The Associated Press (AP). (RELATED: ‘That’s An Interesting Point’: Fox Host Harris Faulkner Amazed By Guest’s ‘Ruby Red Slipper’ Defense Of Trump)
“I was floored,” Brennan told Tapper. “I looked over at Judge Merchan, expecting him to meet my gaze and dismiss her, and he said, ‘Ah, well now, wait a minute.’”
“‘If I instructed you on the law,’” Brennan recalled Merchan asking the outspoken woman, “‘could you put those feelings aside and be fair?’ And she said, like most people say when they see the judge in that black robe, ‘Sure, judge.’”
“She wasn’t the dangerous juror, Jake. Because she answered the questions. The juror who just answers no questions, and, and you just have a gut feeling, and say, if it’s a male juror, say, ‘Uh, sir, you seem to be the perfect juror on paper. There’s nothing about the former president that gives you pull?’ ‘No, fine, put me in, I’ll be great.’ And that’s the juror that I worry about,” Brennan said. “The juror who has some type of ulterior motive to get on that case to settle a score.”
Trump was charged with 34 state felony counts in New York after being accused of falsifying business records to cover up an alleged “hush money” payment related to an extramarital affair with pornographic actress Stormy Daniels.