More jurors were dismissed on the second day of Donald Trump’s hush money case – as he claimed in court the trial “should never have happened.”
No one has yet been chosen from the panel of 12 jurors and six alternates for the historic trial which began Monday.
Several others were excused Tuesday morning after saying they could not be impartial or because they had other commitments.
Dozens of potential jurors still need to be interviewed.
It is the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial and could be the only one that could reach a verdict before the November presidential vote.
If convicted, Trump – the presumptive Republican presidential nominee – would become the first former US president convicted of a crime.
He has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in an alleged attempt to keep salacious and, he says, false stories about his sex life that emerged during his campaign from 2016.
Trump claimed the trial was the result of a politically motivated legal system aimed at depriving him of another term as president.
Before entering the courtroom this morning, he briefly stopped to speak to a television camera in the hallway, reiterating his assertion that the judge was biased against him.
“This is a trial that should never have happened,” Trump said.
Among the potential jurors dismissed today was a woman who had previously informed the judge that she had planned a trip around Memorial Day.
A man was excused after saying he could not be impartial.
Another man, who works at an accounting firm, was fired after saying he feared his ability to be impartial was compromised by “unconscious bias” from growing up in Texas and working in finance with people who “intellectually tend to be Republican.”
The lawsuit centers on $130,000 (£104,400) in payments Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen.
He paid this sum on behalf of Trump to prevent porn actress Stormy Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual relationship with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump has denied the sexual encounter ever occurred.
Prosecutors say the payments were part of a plan to bury damaging stories that Trump feared could help his opponent in the 2016 race, especially as Trump’s reputation suffered at the time. his comments about women.
Trump said the payment, for which he acknowledged reimbursing Mr. Cohen, was intended to prevent Ms. Daniels from making the alleged encounter public.
The former president previously said it had nothing to do with the 2016 campaign.
