Former Judge Andrew Napolitano told Newsmax on Friday that former President Donald Trump's ongoing criminal trial in New York City has seated a "fair and objective" jury that the government and Trump's legal team "agree all deserve to be there."
Napolitano, in an interview with "Wake Up America," dismissed concerns about Trump receiving an impartial jury in the case, in which the former president is accused of allegedly attempting to conceal hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The former judge said that "New York has the fairest system in the country" for jury selection, noting that the defense and prosecution both work to narrow the jury down to 12 people both sides can agree on.
"We have a jury that both the government and Trump's chief … courtroom lawyer, Todd Blanche, a very fine lawyer, agree all deserve to be there, and all are fair and objective people because neither side used all of their freebies to remove people," Napolitano said.
He went on to say, "New York has the fairest system in the country for choosing jurors. There's a lot of aspects of the New York system that's not fair … but when it comes to choosing juries, the judge doesn't do it, the lawyers do it. And they end up with 12 people that both sides agree are the best of the bunch."
The former judge did admit that it's "very unusual" to have two lawyers on the jury, as there are in this case, but noted that they could have been allowed because neither has courtroom experience.
"Most lawyers don't want other lawyers on their juries for fear that they might second-guess the judge or second-guess what happened in the courtroom," Napolitano said. "But both of these lawyers are not trial lawyers. They don't do litigation. One of them said he'd never been in a courtroom in his life until he walked in as a potential juror."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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