NEW YORK (NewsNation) — Despite Donald Trump’s legal team’s hammering of Michael Cohen as a repeated liar, a jury consultant believes jurors likely viewed Cohen through their “own political lens.”
“Let’s just take a step back,” said Renato Stabile. “We are in Manhattan. It is what, 88% Democratic? In all of the jury testing that I’ve done when we test cases when politics are involved, it breaks down across party lines.”
Stabile told NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas that he suspects that was at play during Cohen’s testimony.
“I suspect that these were twelve Democrats on this jury,” said Stabile. “I suspect they are viewing Michael Cohen through their political lens.”
Stabile’s comments received pushback from Vargas, who noted little is known about the jurors’ politics and mentioned that one juror said they occasionally see Trump’s posts on TruthSocial.
“If the prosecution learned that there were Republicans on the jury, it would have been absolutely permissible, legally, to strike those people,” Stabile said. “So I suspect that that is what we were looking at in terms of this jury.”
Trump on Thursday became the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes as a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
Jurors deliberated for 9.5 hours over two days before convicting Trump of all 34 counts he faced. Trump sat stone-faced while the verdict was read as cheering from the street below — where supporters and detractors of the former president were gathered — could be heard in the hallway on the courthouse’s 15th floor where the decision was revealed.