How a 'heavy Republican' MAGA-friendly Florida jury pool could doom Jack Smith’s Trump prosecution: report

11 July 2023

Although former President Donald Trump is facing two criminal indictments — a 37-count federal prosecution from special counsel Jack Smith and a 34-count prosecution in New York State — and is the subject of two separate criminal investigations (one by Smith, one by Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis), none of that means that he will necessarily be convicted of anything.

Acquittals are possible, depending on how well prosecutors make their case and how jurors respond to the evidence being presented. Another factor is location. Trump remains an incredibly polarizing figure who is wildly unpopular in Democrat-leaning areas yet is still adored by his hardcore MAGA base.

A jury pool in New York State could be much different from a jury pool in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis ran a far-right campaign in 2022 and was reelected by 19 percent. In an article published on July 11, the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery emphasizes that a MAGA-friendly jury pool in Florida could easily lead to an acquittal in Smith's Mar-a-Lago case.

The special counsel alleges that Trump endangered the United States' national security by illegally storing top-secret government documents at Mar-a-Lago. Trump, however, insists that all of the documents were "declassified" by the time he left office on January 20, 2021. And MAGA-friendly jurors in Florida might agree.

"The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified documents trial is taking steps that could stock the jury box with the former president's supporters," Pagliery explains. "U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon has set the upcoming trial to open on August 14 at her tiny satellite courthouse in the northern reaches of her district, which stretches from the tropical Florida Keys to the citrus groves halfway up the state. That decision means Trump's jurors are set to be drawn from the most brightly red corner of a vast court district, plucked from a community that leans heavily Republican — instead of the highly populous and more Democratic urban areas further south."

Trump was indicted by a grand jury in Miami, but Pagliery notes that thanks to Cannon — a Trump appointee — the jurors could be "a full 130 miles north" in a GOP-leaning area.

Florida-based defense lawyer Paul Bernard told the Beast, "You drive around, and you'll see 'Trump' flags and 'Make America Great Again' flying in front of houses. With Trump's trial down this way, he's going to have a bunch of supporters — and they're going to make their way onto the jury panel."

The Daily Beast's full report is available at this link (subscription required).

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