Donald Trump's history-making hush money trial starts Monday with jury selection

In a singular moment in American history the hush money trial of former President Donald Trump begins Monday with jury selection Its the first criminal trial of a former commanderinchief and the first of Trumps four indictments to go to trial Because Trump is the presumptive nominee for this years Republican ticket the trial will also produce the headspinning splitscreen of a presidential candidate spending his days in court and he has said campaigning during the nightAnd to some extent it is a trial of the justice system itself as it grapples with a defendant who has used his enormous prominence to assail the judge his daughter the district attorney some witnesses and the allegations all while blasting the legitimacy of a legal structure that he insists has been appropriated by his political opponentsAgainst that backdrop scores of ordinary citizens are due to be called Monday into a cavernous room in a utilitarian courthouse to determine whether they can serve fairly and impartially on the juryThe ultimate issue is whether the prospective jurors can assure us that they will set aside any personal feelings or biases and render a decision that is based on the evidence and the law Judge Juan M Merchan wrote in an April 8 filingTrump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged effort to keep salacious and he says bogus stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaignThe charges centre on 130000 in payments that Trumps company made to his thenlawyer Michael Cohen He paid that sum on Trumps behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public a month before the election with her claims of a sexual encounter with the married mogul a decade earlierProsecutors say the payments to Cohen were falsely logged as legal fees in order to cloak their actual purpose Trumps lawyers say the disbursements indeed were legal expenses not a coverupTrump himself casts the case and his other indictments elsewhere as a broad weaponization of law enforcement by Democratic prosecutors and officials He maintains they are orchestrating sham charges in hopes of impeding his presidential runAfter decades of fielding and initiating lawsuits the businessmanturnedpolitician now faces a trial that could result in up to four years in prison if hes convicted though a nojail sentence also would be possibleRegardless of the eventual outcome the trial of an expresident and current candidate is a moment of extraordinary gravity for the American political system as well as for Trump himself Such a scenario would have once seemed unthinkable to many Americans even for a president whose tenure left a trail of shattered norms including twice being impeached and acquitted by the SenateThe scene inside the courtroom may be greeted with a spectacle outside When Trump was arraigned last year police broke up small skirmishes between his supporters and protesters near the courthouse in a tiny park where a local Republican group has planned a proTrump rally MondayTrumps attorneys lost a bid to get the hush money case dismissed and have since repeatedly sought to delay it prompting a flurry of lastminute appeals court hearings last weekAmong other things Trumps lawyers maintain that the jury pool in overwhelmingly Democratic Manhattan has been tainted by negative publicity about Trump and that the case should be moved elsewhereAn appeals judge turned down an emergency request to delay the trial while the changeofvenue request goes to a group of appellate judges who are set to consider it in the coming weeksManhattan prosecutors have countered that a lot of the publicity stems from Trumps comments and that questioning will tease out whether prospective jurors can put aside any preconceptions they may have Theres no reason prosecutors said to think that 12 fair and impartial people cant be found amid Manhattans roughly 14 million adult residentsThe process of choosing those 12 plus six alternates will begin with scores of people filing into Merchans courtroom They will be known only by number as he has ordered their names to be kept secret from everyone except prosecutors Trump and their legal teamsAfter hearing some basics about the case and jury service the prospective jurors will be asked to raise their hands if they believe they cannot serve or be fair and impartial Those who do so will be excused according to Merchans filing last weekThe rest will be eligible for questioning The 42 preapproved sometimes multipronged queries include background basics but also reflect the uniqueness of the caseDo you have any strong opinions or firmly held beliefs about former President Donald Trump or the fact that he is a current candidate for president that would interfere with your ability to be a fair and impartial juror asks one questionOthers ask about attendance at Trump or antiTrump rallies opinions on how hes being treated in the case news sources and more including any political moral intellectual or religious beliefs or opinions that might slant a prospective jurors approach to the caseBased on the answers the attorneys can ask a judge to eliminate people for cause if they meet certain criteria for being unable to serve or be unbiased The lawyers also can use peremptory challenges to nix 10 potential jurors and two prospective alternates without giving a reasonIf youre going to strike everybody whos either a Republican or a Democrat the judge observed at a February hearing youre going to run out of peremptory challenges very quicklyThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever