MSNBC legal analysts on “Ana Cabrera Reports” Friday broke down whether the “unique” questions asked to potential jurors by Donald Trump’s legal team and the former president’s prosecutors were “poisoning the jury pool” in his classified documents case.
Trump was indicted on 37 counts in June 2023 concerning his alleged mishandling of classified documents. MSNBC host Ana Cabrera explained that Trump’s legal team plans to ask jurors to list politicians they have negative opinions of and to rank their primary media sources. She said Special Counsel Jack Smith’s legal team intends to ask jurors about whether they believe the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” and about their feelings toward the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Former Southern District of New York Criminal Division Deputy Chief Kristy Greenberg told Cabrera that both legal teams asked a few “very unique” questions to potential jurors. She explained that the prosecution proposed questions rejected by Trump, such as those about “Trump’s statements about this investigation” and how “that affected your opinion of this case.”
“There are a lot of standard questions that were in those questionnaires, but the ones that stood out that were very unique to this case that you would not expect to see,” Greenberg said.
“Getting towards all of those public statements that could be, you know, poisoning the jury pool,” she continued. “They’re trying to really understand if these jurors have been infected by his statements.”
Greenberg said Trump’s legal team asked questions about who jurors voted for in the 2020 presidential election, which she called an “inappropriate” question. She said “fair game” questions by the former president’s legal team include those about rally attendance, civic associations and people admired or not admired by jurors. (RELATED: Former Attorney Tells MSNBC Panel How Trial Delays Could Help Trump)
MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin told Cabrera that it will be “less difficult than one might think” for Trump to face a fair and unbiased jury. She mentioned a juror in the E. Jean Carroll trial who was part of the case’s unanimous verdict against the GOP frontrunner despite the juror’s “fairly heavy diet” of podcaster Tim Pool’s content, who she described as “far-right” and “certainly MAGA affiliated.” The jury awarded former Elle Magazine writer E. Jean Carroll a total of $83.3 million in damages in her defamation trial against Trump on Jan. 26.
“I think that people despite their media consumption or who they voted for can be fair,” Rubin said. “I think some of the other questions, though, are also legitimate because they’re meant to test the depth of feeling.”
“It’s not important who you voted for. But for example, if you’ve been a fundraiser for someone or you’ve loyally attended rallies, that may suggest an intensity of feeling that goes above and beyond a person’s capacity to be neutral and fair when they hear all the evidence,” Rubin said.