Jury selection in Donald Trump’s first criminal trial continued Tuesday, with a pool of hundreds of potential jurors slowly being winnowed to just 12 people and six alternates.
Kara McGee, a woman who was dismissed from the prospective jury pool for job-related reasons, told MSNBC it was “jarring” to see Trump in person.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the case, the first criminal trial against a former U.S. president.
McGee estimated she was seated about 30 feet from the former president all day on Monday.
“I had never seen him in person before, you know,” she said. “And you see someone blown up so larger than life on the media for so many years, to see them in person is very jarring.“
She added: “You get the sense that this is just another guy. And also he sees me talking about him, which is bizarre.”
McGee said that when she received her summons, she had no idea it would be for the Trump hush-money trial.
“And then I get here yesterday and there’s a massive line and Trump protesters and counter-protesters … and our holding room had something like 250 people in it, so I assumed that was it.”
Trump attorney Todd Blanche has pressed nearly every potential juror on their opinion of Trump. HuffPost’s Sara Boboltz, who’s in the courthouse, described the makeup of jurors so far as politically “mixed” and “mild.”
