It is, at the very least, highly unusual for the former chair of a sitting president to go on trial for financial fraud charges connected with his political consulting business.  However, barring any last minute delay, jury selection in the Eastern District of Virginia is scheduled to start this upcoming week in the case of United States vs. Paul Manafort.   The essence of the charges is that Manafort engaged in various financial scheme to hide foreign source money to avoid paying income taxes on them and further misrepresented his assets in dealing with financial institutions in the United States.  As Trumpistas like to emphasize, these charges technically have nothing to do with the Trump campaign.  And the connection with Russia is indirect.  On the other hand, that Trump hired this person to run his campaign does not reflect well on Trump’s judgment or the people that he hires for key positions.  And his clients were Ukrainian politicians supporting closer ties to Russia instead of closer ties to Europe and NATO.  This type of second hand connection with Russia has been legion in the Trump Administration and calls into question how this Administration views Russia’s efforts to expand its influence at the expense of the United States.

As with all trials, the first step of the trial will be jury selection.  In state courts, trial courts are typically organized on the county level.  So, barring a change of location, if you commit a crime in Atlanta, Georgia, all of your jurors will come from Fulton County.  Federal courts, however, cover a wider geographic area.  In the smaller states, there is one federal court district.  Larger states, however, tend to have multiple districts.  In Virginia, there are two districts — the Eastern District and the Western District.  Manafort’s case is in the Eastern District.  Even in the smaller states, most districts are subdivided into divisions.  The Eastern District of Virginia has four divisions, each designated based on the city in which the courthouse is located:  the Alexandria, Newport News, Norfolk, and Richmond Divisions.  Manafort’s case is in the Alexandria Division which covers Loudon, Fairfax,   Fauquier, Arlington, Prince Williams, and Stafford Counties and the City of Alexandria.  As such, the potential jurors will come from all of these counties.

The key part of jury selection is what lawyers call voir dire — the questioning of potential jurors to see who is qualified to sit as a juror.  In almost every jurisdiction, the law gives the trial judge control over voir dire.  In state courts, for the most parts, judges allow the lawyers to conduct voir dire.  In many federal courts, judges conduct voir dire themselves with input over the topics to be covered coming from the attorneys.  I have not seen anything about how the judge presiding over this case handles voir dire. Continue Reading...