In picking the final set of nameless jurors for Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial, Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan ordered reporters to no longer publish employment details and other potentially identifiable information about the jury, including physical descriptions.
While Trump and his lawyers know this information, as do District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecutors, the objective is not to hide things from the public, but to protect the jurors from harassment and intimidation. Some legal scholars have questioned the legality of parts of this order, signaling the very high bar that prior restraint on the First Amendment must clear and it’s uncertain if it would hold up if challenged.
We support full openness in court proceedings and the ability of the free press to report on what transpires, but recognize that Merchan has a legitimate goal in mind. It’s been difficult enough as is for the judge to find jurors who can credibly claim to be remotely impartial in this matter without piling on the difficulties of a harsh public spotlight. One juror, known only as B280, was already dismissed at least in part due to concerns that news articles made her entirely identifiable.
This spotlight is more than just annoying, it’s conceivably dangerous. The Jan. 6 prosecutions included members of the Oath Keepers paramilitary group, which had stashed weapons in preparation for an order from the president to actually take over the government by military means.
Pretty much everyone involved with efforts to hold Trump accountable for his conduct has faced barrages of death threats, and unlike some of the public officials at issue here, individual jurors won’t have protective details.
It would have been better for Merchan to avoid having these details revealed in open court, because they can’t be unsaid or unheard.
So is the judge ordering the press to withhold the details a reasonable measure? Under what circumstances would it be crucial for the jurors to be safeguarded from the real possibility of harm? For a trial of a mob boss or a terrorist? How about for a former (and possible future) president of the United States, and who has a credible shot at holding that office again?
Yes, it’s Trump’s rabid and fanatical followers and not the ex-president himself that represent a credible threat to the jurors, but that’s only because Trump has openly embraced political violence and given tacit approval to this intimidation.
His frequent railing against those involved in the case, from the prosecutors to the judge and even the judge’s family, has never explicitly strayed into advocating for violence, yet it’s an implication his supporters can clearly read.
No one doubts that a mobster saying “it’s a nice shop you’ve got here, real shame if something were to happen to it,” is relaying a threat, and we shouldn’t extend that benefit of the doubt to Trump, who already sent a mob to subvert a presidential election by force.
Hopefully, these jurors and those in Trump’s other cases will finally dole out some real consequences to the man who has so rarely faced any, and establish once and for all that he is not truly above the law. If and until that happens, he will only get bolder in his authoritarianism, and more dangerous.
