Legal expert Elie Mystal warned Sunday that former President Donald Trump needs just “one cultist, one dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter to sneak into that jury” on his hush money trial and “he or she can hang the whole thing.”
“Jury selection is kind of going to be the whole ball game” and crucial to the outcome of the criminal proceedings against the presumptive GOP nominee, the attorney and legal reporter for The Nation told MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin.
Mystal explained that “at a higher level” the goal of jury selection, which begins Monday, will not be to “find someone who doesn’t have an opinion on Trump” because that “is impossible.”
Instead, it will be to “find people who, in good faith, are willing to put aside what they already know and believe about Trump and instead only take in the evidence presented to them at trial,” he noted.
Mystal admitted it would be “difficult” and that he himself could not do it.
“If you put me on the jury, I’d be like, ‘No, I’ve already made up my damn mind,’” he said. “So, I’m out of that jury pool. But, I’m going to sound naive, but I think in New York City you can find 12 people not who don’t have an opinion on Trump but who are willing to put that aside as best they can and listen to the evidence presented to them at trial.”