Hurdles to finding Trump jury 'astronomically greater than any case in history': expert

Former President Donald Trump's 2020 federal election interference trial is likely to hit major problems during jury selection, a former federal prosecutor warned in an article published in Slate Tuesday.

This comes a day after a Washington D.C. appeals court heard arguments about the gag order imposed by Judge Tanya Chutkan which is considered to have gone poorly for Trump's lawyers — but which nonetheless revealed complexities about the case that don't exist for other kinds of defendants.

"The difficulties in jury selection in the Trump trial are astronomically greater than any case in history," wrote Robert Katzberg.

"The defendant has far more media power than any prior defendant and has shown his clear intention to use that power to thwart the criminal justice system in any way possible. Especially as he gets closer and closer to a jail sentence, his efforts to blow everything up will only increase."

To some extent, this is not an unprecedented issue, Katzberg noted. "Jury selection in any high-publicity trial is more difficult and time-consuming than in the typical criminal case," he wrote.

"Jurors must first be individually questioned about what they have read in newspapers, seen on the internet, heard on the radio, or watched on TV."

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Judges and lawyers then have to decide how much exposure they might have had affects the prospective jurors' ability to determine the facts of the case fairly.

The real problem, the lawyer explained, is Trump's ability to influence prospective jurors from his numerous platforms — and that is what the judges have to consider as they decide not just whether to reinstate the gag order, as they appear inclined to do, but how to potentially revise it to avoid any thorny First Amendment issues with restricting Trump's political activity in the midst of the trial.

Jury tampering has historically derailed a number of high-profile cases — most notably one of the early trials of New York mob boss John Gotti, whose legal situation has often been compared to Trump's.

It is clear, based on what the judges asked during Monday's hearing, that, "The jury issue will be foremost in the appellate panels’ minds when they craft their order," Katzberg wrote.