Alina Habba, an attorney for former President Trump, suggested the jury in the hush-money trial should have been sequestered over Memorial Day weekend to prevent outside influence ahead of this week’s closing arguments.
“They should have been sequestered, because, in my opinion, these jurors are handling something that is completely unprecedented and unwarranted in America,” Habba said Sunday on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“And for them to be able to be out and about on a holiday weekend with friends and families who have opinions, who are watching the news, TVs in the background at the pool party, I have serious concerns. If they’re left-wing and they’re watching MSDNC, as my client calls it, [MSNBC] or CNN, they’re not going to get fair news.”
The 12 New York jurors will be tasked this week with weighing whether to convict Trump on 34 criminal counts, all of which need to have the same decision or else the case ends in a mistrial.
The former president is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with reimbursements to then-fixer Michael Cohen after he paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 to keep quiet about an alleged affair. He pleaded not guilty and has repeatedly denied the affair with Daniels.
Trump’s defense last Tuesday rested their case without calling the former president to the stand, and the jurors were dismissed until this coming Tuesday, when closing statements are slated to begin. Jury deliberations will follow shortly afterward.
Judge Juan Merchan said closing arguments will not be held until this coming Tuesday as a result of some “issues,” though he did not explain what those might be.
Habba argued the holiday weekend will allow jurors to speak with their friends who might have “Trump derangement syndrome,” an informal term used by Trump allies to refer to criticism of the former president.
“I have worries about them going back to whatever friends might have Trump derangement syndrome, forgetting all sense of reality, and coming back and sitting in that box and saying, you know what, I have got to take one for the [Democratic National Committee],” Habba said. “I don’t want that. I want law to [be] fact, because, if we can get that, we will win, we will not just get a hung jury, we will get an acquittal. So, let’s see.”