Full Jury Is Chosen in Trump Criminal Trial (2024)

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Five takeaways from the fourth day of Trump’s criminal trial.

But the trial’s pace, which has been faster than expected, did not slack. After lunch, Justice Juan M. Merchan conducted a hearing to determine which questions prosecutors might ask Mr. Trump if he were to testify in his own defense.

Mr. Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records in an attempt to cover up a payment to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who has said they had a sexual encounter in 2006. Prosecutors have said he did so to better his chances of winning the election. He has denied the charges; the former president could face probation or prison if convicted.

Opening statements in the case are expected Monday.

Here are five takeaways from Mr. Trump’s fourth day, and the first week, on trial:

We have our jury. And many are probably familiar with the Lexington Avenue subway.

The process was grueling at times, but we have a panel of 12 Manhattanites who comprise the jury, and six alternates, who will hear the evidence and may be called upon to step in if jurors are excused or disqualified.

It is a diverse bunch, both in their neighborhoods and professions: a Harlem educator, a Chelsea tech worker, a product manager from Upper Manhattan. The alternates who were added Friday included a fashion worker from Chinatown, an information technology specialist from Inwood and an unemployed woman from Murray Hill.

The most heavily represented neighborhood? It seems to be the Upper East Side, with five sitting jurors or alternates.

Trump is almost out of options to stall.

Mr. Trump’s prevailing legal tactic has always been to delay, delay, delay. But on Friday, Mr. Trump’s efforts to forestall next week’s opening statements and subsequent testimony seemed to be running out of gas.

As jury selection concluded, Mr. Trump was losing a bid in an appeals court to pause the proceedings while a full panel of the court could consider a motion to move the trial out of Manhattan.

Justice Merchan also seemed done with efforts to stall the case further, telling defense attorneys in no uncertain terms that he was proceeding with the case on Monday.

Prosecutors seek permission to confront Trump with his legal losses.

Mr. Trump has said that he wants to take the stand, saying that he wants to “tell the truth” and that the prosecution has “no case.” But if he does testify, he will open himself to questions from prosecutors, who cannot otherwise compel him to speak.

On Friday, Justice Merchan held a hearing over what topics prosecutors could question Mr. Trump on were he to testify, including a civil fraud trial in which the New York attorney general won $454 million from the former president after proving he had conspired with others to inflate his net worth. Prosecutors are also asking to bring up a civil jury’s finding last year that Mr. Trump was liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll.

Emil Bove, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said that introducing questions about the civil fraud trial would take the criminal trial down a “rabbit hole,” and confuse jurors.

Justice Merchan said he would rule Monday, presumably before opening statements.

The immolation shattered the focus on Mr. Trump, if only briefly.

At about 1:35 p.m., just as Justice Merchan was preparing to swear in five alternates, a scene of horror erupted in a small park just across from the courtroom: A man had set himself on fire after throwing leaflets promulgating anti-government conspiracy theories into the air. Onlookers screamed, and bright orange flames engulfed the man.

The man, identified as Max Azzarello, 37, of St. Augustine, Fla., was taken to a hospital and died on Friday night.

The self-immolation, which occurred just behind a battery of television news crews, did the seemingly impossible, temporarily drawing attention away from Mr. Trump’s legal battles.

Later on Friday afternoon, Justice Merchan reconvened court but the reverberations continued. Officials said that many inside the courts were deeply shaken and saddened.

“The entire court is impacted by this,” said Al Baker, a courts spokesman.

The trial was expected to be dramatic. It has lived up to its billing.

There was a crush of reporters at the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building and a defiant and divisive defendant, delivering broadsides against the prosecution and judge as he entered court. There were courtroom clashes and unexpected twists.

The first week of Mr. Trump’s trial did not fail to deliver drama, including a steady stream of potential jurors who said they simply could not be impartial, and lawyers for the defense battling — often unsuccessfully — to get rid of jurors they felt could not be fair. Some potential jurors wept at the thought of being seated on the jury.

For all that, the actual testimony and evidence is still to come in a trial that is expected to take weeks and to include even more electric moments, including Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, facing his old boss in court. (And testifying against him.)

Ms. Daniels may testify, as may Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who said she, too, had an affair with Mr. Trump. (He denies this too.) Hope Hicks, Mr. Trump’s former communications director, is also on the potential witness list.

All of which suggests that more theatrics could be in the offing.

Here’s where jurors in the Trump hush-money trial say they get their news.

Lawyers for each side have a limited number of so-called peremptory challenges, which they can use to dismiss jurors without having to state a reason. With limited information about the jury pool, what a prospective juror reveals about what they read, watch and listen to can signal their political leanings.

Wesley Parnell contributed reporting.

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Justice Merchan has left the bench. Trump is standing and looking around the room.

Trump walks out of the courtroom, patting the bench behind the defense table like an old friend as he goes.

It’s very striking how sharply Justice Merchan scolds Susan Necheles, one of Trump's lawyers, when they interact. It’s happened a few times.

Even the judge seems a little weary after this week, having just corrected himself twice on the timing of a hearing on Trump's gag order. (It will be Tuesday morning at 9:30.)

Todd Blanche, one of Trump's lawyers, objects, saying it was the prosecutors who sought a clarification. Justice Merchan allows the prosecutors to respond and one, Joshua Steinglass, disagrees, calling it “just another tactic.”

Despite his scolding, Justice Merchan is now again clarifying how the “Access Hollywood’ tape will be spoken about — not shown, but described.

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I’ll be curious to see how the defense takes this. Previously they argued at an appeals court that the very necessity of filing pre-motion letters made it harder to defend their client's constitutional rights. It is almost comical that one of their lawyers is at an appeals court right now seeking to again change the venue where the trial is being held.

Trump is sitting hunched over but pretty still as Justice Merchan admonishes his team. A sharp contrast to how he would respond when the judge in the E. Jean Carroll case did the same.

This is the Trump legal strategy in overdrive, and the court system has a hard time dealing with it.

Bove essentially says that it is an important thing to consider, and mostly leaves it there.

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The final members of Trump’s jury are chosen as the trial races ahead.

The day was marked by an intensity of emotion from the start. Several prospective jurors asked to be excused, and some became upset, with one saying she had become too nervous to continue the process.

Then word quietly began to spread about the man who had set himself on fire in a park across the street from the courthouse. The courtroom proceedings continued, but the stir was noticeable, and reporters ran from the room.

The motivations of the man, whom city officials identified as Max Azzarello, 37, of St. Augustine, Fla., were not immediately clear, but he was carrying leaflets espousing antigovernment conspiracy theories. He was hospitalized and died on Friday night.

An afternoon hearing at which the judge was to determine the questions prosecutors could ask the former president if he were to testify proceeded as scheduled.

Mr. Trump, 77, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to his effort to silence a p*rn star, Stormy Daniels, who in 2016 was seeking to sell her story of having had sex with Mr. Trump a decade earlier. The former president denies her claim and has pleaded not guilty, harshly criticizing the case, the first time a U.S. president has faced a criminal trial.

The selection of the final alternates capped a whirlwind week that captured the attention of a crush of media and a smattering of protesters who descended on the Criminal Courts Building in Lower Manhattan.

The courthouse was subject to heavy security as Mr. Trump came and went from the courtroom, stopping only to attack the case and the judge overseeing it, Juan M. Merchan, as well as Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney.

Those attacks continued on Friday, as a defiant Mr. Trump, as has become his custom during the trial’s first week, used the hallway outside the courtroom to address reporters and a pool camera.

“This is a rigged trial,” Mr. Trump said, attacking Mr. Bragg and complaining about not being able to campaign because he is in court. “It’s very unfair. And people know it’s very unfair.”

Still, Mr. Trump’s legal efforts have been an uphill climb. Even as jury selection was concluding, Mr. Trump filed an appeal for another emergency pause of the trial, arguing that the case should be stopped until a full panel rules on his bid to move the trial out of Manhattan. An appeals court judge denied the request.

Justice Merchan seemed weary of the defense’s efforts to continually file motions that might delay the trial.

“There comes a point where you accept my rulings,” he said during his own hearing on Friday to decide what subjects prosecutors can confront Mr. Trump with should he decide to testify.

Prosecutors asked Justice Merchan’s permission to cross-examine the former president about recent lawsuits he has lost, as well as attacks he has made on women. The judge said he would rule on the matter on Monday.

The criminal trial has moved more quickly than many people expected. Some observers initially believed jury selection could take as long as two weeks, but Justice Merchan, sometimes keeping the parties later than normal and seemingly intent on treating the case like any other, was able to fill the jury box in half that time.

Still, the divisiveness that has accompanied Mr. Trump’s political career was evident in the jury selection process: Scores of potential jurors said they simply could not be impartial. One, a nurse, was seated on the jury and then decided she could not be fair, adding that she had become alarmed by the early press coverage and by people divining her identity. Another seated juror was disqualified after prosecutors raised questions about his credibility.

Prosecutors have indicated that they intend to minimize Mr. Trump’s celebrity, saying in court this week that he is “just like any other defendant in any other criminal case,” while acknowledging the strong feelings he inspires.

“It’s not a referendum on the Trump presidency or a popularity contest or any indication of who you are going to vote for in November,” said one prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, while addressing jurors on Tuesday. “We don’t care.”

The defense is expected to attack the credibility of the prosecution’s witnesses aggressively, particularly Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who made the payment to Ms. Daniels and pleaded guilty in 2018 to breaking campaign finance and other federal laws.

During jury selection the defense lawyers have focused intently on potential jurors’ opinions about Mr. Trump, echoing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s lifelong obsession with “fairness.”

“It’s extraordinarily important to President Trump that we know that we’re going to get a fair shake,” Todd Blanche, his lead lawyer, said.

Mr. Trump has made his displeasure over the trial apparent, with a constant barrage of online attacks on Mr. Cohen, several of which have been highlighted by prosecutors, who say the former president has violated a gag order issued by Justice Merchan 10 separate times.

The order forbids attacks on witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and court staff members, as well as their relatives and relatives of the judge. The judge plans a hearing on Tuesday to consider whether Mr. Trump has violated the gag order.

Justice Merchan has also expressed concern about juror safety, saying on Thursday that he would prohibit reporters from revealing information about the current and past employment histories of jurors and potential jurors.

He pleaded with reporters not to reveal physical characteristics that might identify them, asking journalists to “refrain from writing about anything that you observe with your eyes and hear with your ears related to the jurors that’s not on the record.”

Mr. Trump’s demeanor has generally been subdued, and he appeared to doze off on several occasions. Outside court, he repeatedly addressed reporters in brief spurts at the beginning and end of his days in court, calling the trial a “witch hunt.” (On Thursday, he also commiserated with reporters about the courtroom being cold, a problem that has been acknowledged by the judge.)

The former president has also been active on his Truth Social platform in describing how he feels he is being victimized in the Manhattan proceedings and insisting that he is entitled to immunity in a federal case charging him with illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election.

The Manhattan case is the first to go trial out of four criminal indictments Mr. Trump faces, and it may be the only one to go to trial before the November election. Two federal cases — one involving his hoarding of classified documents, the other stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election — and a state case concerning election interference in Georgia are mired in delays and pretrial litigation.

As the final jurors were selected on Friday, the gravity of the looming testimony — and the impact the eventual verdict could have on the presidential race, and the nation as a whole — seemed to shake some who had been called to the courthouse to do their civic duty.

One potential juror found herself overcome while facing questions from a defense lawyer and asked to be excused.

“This is so much more stressful than I thought it was going to be,” she said.

Maggie Haberman, Kate Christobek and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

And a current lawyer for Trump who worked for his side on that case, Susan Necheles, is here as well.

Justice Merchan reads another quote from the judge in that suit, in which he labeled Trump a “sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries." The judge said: “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer.” Justice Merchan sounds inclined to allow prosecutors to cross-examine Trump on this matter.

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Potential jurors have been confronted with old social-media posts whose vehemence surprised them.

They were hers, she confirmed, and the judge directed her to read them aloud. It took her a moment to get to the crux of the first, which dated back to 2016.

“Let’s be civil,” she read. “And try to protect the rights of the many at risk should we fail to stop the election of a racist, sexist, narcissist …” She interrupted herself. “Oops. That sounds bad.”

It was just one of several such inquisitions this week as lawyers and the judge asked prospective jurors, who live in deeply Democratic Manhattan, to explain social media posts that were critical of him as president or as a candidate. The posts were apparently unearthed by researchers working for the legal team representing Donald J. Trump.

Prosecutors asked their own questions, but for the most part did not delve into the prospective jurors’ posting histories. It was the defense team that expressed the most concern about what had happened online, an appropriate focus for lawyers representing the most online of presidents.

Mr. Trump thrived on social media. Using Twitter, a platform that began pushing itself as a breaking news source the year before the 2016 election, he created a sense for his followers that he was speaking directly to them. He also used the platform for slashing attacks on rivals, promoting his own thoughts or positions on news of the day, and to shape the perception of the campaign.

But, in retrospect, many posts from that era — from political operatives, from civilians and from journalists — “sound bad,” as the prospective juror put it. The 2016 election was the first in which the social internet, having reached full maturity, played a central role.

The social internet has evolved in rapid stages, and the eight years between 2016 and 2024 might as well be an eon. Twitter, now owned by the billionaire Elon Musk and renamed X, has become less of a central force in political conversation, and awareness of the toxicity of social media is broader.

Many people have publicly questioned why they spent so much time making comments on social media. Over the past week, some jurors who were confronted with their old posts seemed sheepish, if not outright embarrassed.

That happened to the prospective juror who had called Mr. Trump sexist and racist. Identifying herself as a “Bernie gal,” who had supported the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders, she first defended herself.

“Electoral politics can get pretty spicy,” she said. “And Mr. Trump can get pretty spicy with his politics sometimes too.”

But then she apologized to Mr. Trump for the tone of the posts, underscoring how infrequently people have to interact personally with someone they criticize online. “I have stopped making such harsh political posts,” she said. She maintained that she could be a fair juror, but the defense used a challenge to dismiss her.

Other posts, some from Facebook, also came up. One prospective juror, known as B38, wrote, “Watch out for stupid tweets by DJT,” and, apparently once Mr. Trump was elected, “get him out and lock him up.” He was brought into the courtroom, and told the judge that he could put his views aside and be fair. But he was dismissed.

Another prospect found her husband’s old posts placed under the microscope. One was a screen grab of a video showing actors who play members of the Avengers, a group of Marvel superheroes, as they “unite against Donald J. Trump.”

(Someone else replied with the riff, “the Avengers unite against Donald Trump, and to get Mark Ruffalo naked,” referring to the reluctant promise by the actor who plays the Hulk to do a nude scene in his next movie if viewers turned out at the polls.)

That juror, too, was dismissed.

Mr. Trump’s own posts are not off limits. The Manhattan district attorney’s office sought to introduce several tweets from his presidency, in which he first defended and then attacked his former fixer Michael D. Cohen, who paid $130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels. Mr. Trump is charged with falsifying business records to cover up reimbursem*nts for that payment.

The judge said that the prosecution would likely be allowed to show the former president’s old posts to jurors.

“It’s going to be hard to convince me that something that he tweeted out to millions of people voluntarily cannot be used in court,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s posting style has not changed much; if anything, it has become darker since he was banned from X after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob seeking to stop the certification of President Biden’s election. (Mr. Trump was reinstated by Mr. Musk, but has since started his own social media site, Truth Social, where he posts frequently.)

On Thursday, as court concluded for the day, a Trump lawyer, Todd Blanche, asked to be told who the prosecution’s first three witnesses would be. But prosecutors refused, noting that the former president had consistently attacked witnesses on social media.

Mr. Blanche asked the judge whether he could be allowed to promise that Mr. Trump wouldn’t post about witnesses.

Justice Merchan was dubious.

“I don’t think you can make that representation,” he said.

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Its fitting that Colangelo is talking about the civil fraud trial. He used to work at the New York attorney general’s office and was a lead lawyer on the investigation that led to that trial.

Colangelo is bringing up a moment during the civil fraud trial when the judge found that Trump had violated a gag order in that case. The judge in that case summoned Trump to the stand and found that he had lied, and said that his testimony rang “hollow and untrue.”

The civil fraud trial was a complicated knot for people to follow on its own.

In the civil fraud trial, the New York attorney general sued Trump for conspiring, along with others, to manipulate his net worth. A judge found Trump liable and fined him hundreds of millions of dollars.

Remember, this is an evidentiary hearing and it determines what Trump can be asked if he is cross-examined. It’s all very conditional — a lot of ifs — but it’s also hugely important because it could determine whether Trump decides to testify. It may also become an important issue in the appeals process.

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We are listening to Emil Bove, a Trump lawyer, speaking in court as the prosecutors look to seal trial exhibits that at least in part come from Michael D. Cohen’s phone.

One such exhibit is the contact list in Cohen’s phone, which contains 39,000 contacts.

Justice Merchan just scolded Bove for interrupting him. Bove said he did not, and the judge ordered him to take a seat.

Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, two of Trump’s lawyers, have switched seats on either side of him. Bove appears poised to handle the argument in the Sandoval hearing.

Prosecutors signal they will ask Trump about attacks on women if he testifies.

The proceeding, known as a Sandoval hearing, was a high-stakes affair for all the parties: the prosecutors, the defense team, Mr. Trump and Justice Merchan himself. Whatever the judge decides will inform whether the former president decides to testify and, if he does, what prosecutors can ask him.

Though Mr. Trump has said he would testify in his own defense, there have been plenty of signs that he is not fully committed to. This week, his lawyers asked prospective jurors to assure them that they wouldn’t hold a failure to testify against Mr. Trump.

The arguments, held in front of Justice Merchan in the afternoon, went quickly, with little indication of which way the judge was leaning. The judge said he would rule on Monday.

Chief among the topics prosecutors asked to discuss were the civil fraud trials that Mr. Trump lost in quick succession in recent months. In one, the New York attorney general accused him of having conspired with others to inflate his net worth. In the other, the writer E. Jean Carroll accused him of defamation for remarks he had made in 2019 after she accused him of raping her decades earlier.

The aim of a Sandoval hearing is to let a defendant decide whether it is in his or her best interest to testify. In the hearing, which typically takes place before a trial, prosecutors are required to outline a defendant’s past crimes and misdeeds that could be brought up on cross-examination.

Defense attorneys can ask a judge to prohibit prosecutors from asking the defendant about previous incidents, on the theory knowing about those events would unfairly prejudice the jury.

Prosecutors are also asking to bring up a civil jury’s finding last year that Mr. Trump was liable for sexually abusing Ms. Carroll.

Emil Bove, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said that introducing questions about the civil fraud trial would take the criminal trial down a “rabbit hole,” and confuse jurors. And he fought tooth and nail against the admission of any evidence related to Ms. Carroll’s lawsuits.

Prosecutors fought back, maintaining that the judge’s finding that Mr. Trump had not been credible when he testified at the civil fraud trial was relevant to the current criminal case, and that his defamatory statements about Ms. Carroll, determined to be false by a civil jury, would give jurors in the criminal case crucial context.

“That is critical to assessing the defendant’s credibility if he testifies,” one of the prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, said.

There was only one issue on which Justice Merchan seemed to be clearly indicate that he was inclined to side with the prosecution. Prosecutors asked whether they could cross-examine Mr. Trump about a lawsuit he filed against Hillary Rodham Clinton and others that a federal judge in Florida, Donald Middlebrooks, determined was “frivolous.”

Justice Merchan read aloud from Judge Middlebrook’s decision, which said that Mr. Trump was a “sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” and a “mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process.”

The Sandoval hearing is unique to the New York State criminal court system, and it takes its name from a 1974 case, the People of the State of New York v. Augustin Sandoval. Mr. Sandoval was charged with murder. His lawyer asked a judge to forbid mention of Mr. Sandoval’s past crimes, which included driving while intoxicated, saying they would create prejudice. The judge ultimately limited what prosecutors could ask.

Sandoval hearings have arisen in other prominent New York cases. Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie producer, declined to testify in his criminal trial in 2020 after the presiding judge said he would permit prosecutors to question Mr. Weinstein about 28 allegations of other crimes and previous “bad acts.”

But that case also points toward the danger for a judge: Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers have appealed that decision, which legal experts consider one of the most credible challenges to his conviction. His lawyers have taken their arguments all the way to New York’s highest court, which has yet to issue a decision.

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A man set himself on fire outside the courthouse.

People rushed and tried to put out the flames, but the intensity of the heat could be felt from some distance.

After a minute or two, dozens of police officers arrived, running around and climbing over barricades to extinguish the blaze. The man was loaded into an ambulance and rushed to a hospital burn unit. He died on Friday night.

City officials identified the man as Max Azzarello, 37, of St. Augustine, Fla. Mr. Azzarello had appeared outside the courthouse on Thursday, holding a sign displaying the address of a website where the same pamphlets were uploaded. The top post of the website says, “I have set myself on fire outside the Trump Trial.”

Mr. Azzarello walked around Lower Manhattan earlier in the week, holding a sign on Wednesday critical of New York University at Washington Square Park before moving on Thursday to Collect Pond Park.

At the park on Thursday, Mr. Azzarello had held up various signs and at one point shouted toward a group of reporters gathered there, “Biggest scoop of your life or your money back!” One of his signs claimed that Mr. Trump and President Biden were “about to fascist coup us.”

In an interview that day, he said his critical views of the American government were shaped by his research into Peter Thiel, the technology billionaire and political provocateur who is a major campaign donor, and into cryptocurrency.

Mr. Azzarello said he had relocated from Washington Square Park because with the cold weather, he thought more people would be outside the courthouse.

“Trump’s in on it,” Mr. Azzarello said on Thursday. “It’s a secret kleptocracy, and it can only lead to an apocalyptic fascist coup.”

Mr. Azzarello arrived in New York City sometime after April 13, the police said, and his family in St. Augustine did not know about his whereabouts until after the incident. While Mr. Azzarello was recently in Florida, he had connections to the New York City area and worked for Representative Tom Suozzi during his 2013 campaign for Nassau County executive on Long Island.

A man at a Brooklyn address associated with a possible relative of Mr. Azarello’s declined to comment on Thursday.

Over the past year, however, Mr. Azzarello’s behavior appeared to become more erratic. He was arrested three times in 2023 on misdemeanor charges in Florida, and he posted online in August that he had just spent three days in a psychiatric hospital.

Later that month, while dining at the Casa Monica Hotel in St. Augustine, he threw a glass of wine at a framed autograph of former President Bill Clinton. He showed up to the hotel again, two days later on Aug. 21, stripped to his underwear and shouted profanities at guests while blasting music from a speaker.

Three days later, police arrested him for defacing and breaking signs belonging to several businesses. He took a pest control sign from the yard of one business that had warned passers-by to keep children and pets away for their safety. In comments to the police, he said that “the pest control company was there to exterminate children and dogs.”

His mug shot shows Mr. Azzarello sticking his tongue out.

In addition to his website, Mr. Azzarello was also active on social media, promoting anti-government literature on Instagram. Most of his online posts before the spring of 2022 were of his travels and his family, and he noted that his mother died in April 2022 from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

About a year later, he posted a photo of what appeared to be his Covid-19 vaccination card — defaced with the words “Super Ponzi” and the symbol for Bitcoin.

People who witnessed the fire said they were in disbelief as they saw Mr. Azzarello, who was in an area of the park reserved for supporters of Mr. Trump, toss the pamphlets into the air and then flames shoot toward the sky. Mr. Azzarello, who was wearing jeans and dark gray T-shirt, fell to the ground amid the fire.

Some of the pamphlets referred to New York University as a “mob front” and also mentioned former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Al Gore and the lawyer David Boies, who represented Mr. Gore in the 2000 presidential election recount. Another pamphlet contained anti-government conspiracy theories, though they did not point in a discernible political direction.

Most officers who responded to the fire on Thursday ran from the direction of the courthouse, which is a couple of hundred feet across the street; some struggled to immediately reach Mr. Azzarello because of steel barricades in the park.

Al Baker, a spokesman for the court system, said the trial schedule would not be affected, though one court officer had been taken to hospital because of the effects of smoke inhalation.

Fred Gates, 60, said he had been riding his bike through the park when he stopped to watch the Trump supporters and saw Mr. Azzarello getting ready to light himself on fire. Mr. Gates said he thought it was a prank or a performance until he saw the flames.

Another witness, Gideon Oliver, a civil rights lawyer, said he saw smoke rising from the park and a court officer rushing from a building carrying a fire extinguisher.

“When I saw and smelled the smoke I thought someone, I assumed one of the pro-Trump protesters, had lit a fire in the park,” Mr. Oliver said. “When I saw police and court officers running, I then thought it might have been a bomb.”

Mr. Azzarello stood tall as he poured the accelerant on himself and then held a flame at chest level. As people nearest him fled, others cried out as they realized what he was about to do.

Screams and shouts — though not from him — filled the air as the flames consumed him and he slowly collapsed.

Wesley Parnell, Alan Feuer, Chelsia Rose Marcius, Jan Ransom, Maria Cramer, Stefanos Chen, Nicholas Fandos and Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.

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It was an intense day for some potential jurors as they answered personal questions.

One potential juror described a painful series of experiences in her own life, some of which sprang from a criminal conviction she faced in another state. Juan M. Merchan, the judge who is overseeing the trial, ultimately dismissed the woman, but thanked her for her bravery in sharing with the court. Mr. Trump only looked at her occasionally.

Another began the morning session by describing herself as extremely anxious and saying she took medicine to address it.

A third, who said when she answered the juror questionnaire that she had a family connection to Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, returned to answer more specific questions from prosecutors. When she did, she began to cry and said she didn’t think she could commit to serving.

“This is so much more stressful than I thought it was going to be,” she said.

It is common in significant cases for the jury selection process to take longer than it has. But Justice Merchan has been focused on ensuring as speedy a trial as possible.

That has meant extremely intense days for potential jurors. Adding to the stress they are facing, they are in the running to help decide a case without precedent: Mr. Trump is the first former United States president to face a criminal trial.

They have been asked personal details about their lives, their histories, their hobbies and their reading habits. They have had their social media use explored for any suggestion of bias against Mr. Trump.

All of the questioning has taken place with Mr. Trump seated nearby at the defense table. Mr. Trump has appeared to nod off during morning proceedings throughout the week, but he was alert during jury selection on Friday, often watching people closely as they spoke.

One prospective juror became emotional when answering a question about his experiences with and opinion of law enforcement. “Tough question,” he said, and sighed. “There was a good experience, but it was a tough one. And the system was helpful.”

He leaned forward on his knees as he continued to respond to the juror questionnaire, saying at one point, in an echo of the woman who spoke earlier, “This is more stressful than I thought.”

Even some of the responses that elicited a smile from the defendant were poignant.

One man said he spent his spare time trying to find a wife and hadn’t succeeded yet, prompting a chuckle from Mr. Trump. The potential juror then said he had all the time in the world to devote to the case, underscoring the bachelor’s life he’d hinted at in his earlier answer.

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Outside the courtroom, Trump is the center of attention. Inside, he has a rival.

Secret Service agents are glued to his every move and gesture, as are many reporters. Jurors glance and gawk. If he were to storm out of court suddenly, as he has in other proceedings, it would be the biggest news of the day.

But in court, unlike almost everywhere else, Mr. Trump has competition: The judge, Juan M. Merchan, exudes his own gravity and has power Mr. Trump does not. And on Thursday, after a new pool of 96 prospective jurors walked into the high-ceilinged room, their attention slid from the former president seated at the defense table to the judge. Justice Merchan spoke to them for a half-hour about the case and their roles.

“The defendant in this case is Donald Trump,” the judge said, “and he is seated to my right.” Several of the Manhattanites — normally so good at pretending to be unfazed by encounters with the famous — took the opportunity to stare.

“My role,” the judge added, “is to help assure a fair and orderly trial.”

The contest for attention between the judge and the former president — the rule of law and the spectacle that butts up against it — is likely to be one of the defining characteristics of the trial, in which the former president is charged with 34 felonies, accused of covering up a sex scandal that could have hurt his presidential campaign.

In most courtrooms, the judge is an unquestionable authority, and often wins the devotion of jurors as a benevolent parental figure. Judges are often protective of jurors, preparing them for their crucial role of deciding a defendant’s future.

“We are both judges in the case,” Justice Merchan said to the 96 prospective jurors on Thursday. “It is important to recognize that we judge different things. You, the jury, judge the facts of the case in order to reach a verdict of guilty or not guilty, and I judge the law, meaning I decide questions of the law and I instruct the jury on the law.”

Many defendants, often on the advice of their lawyers, offer a subdued presence at the defense table. They do not want to get into the habit of reacting to events. The actor Jonathan Majors, who went on trial late last year in Manhattan for misdemeanor assault, often tilted his head away from jurors at a slight angle, the better to disguise his expressions and reactions.

That’s not Mr. Trump. He did not speak to prospective jurors on Thursday, but he certainly did look at them, following them with his eyes as they walked to the jury box to answer questions.

Earlier in the week, Justice Merchan scolded Mr. Trump for trying to influence a prospective juror even more directly. The woman had been called into the courtroom individually so that lawyers and the judge could ask her about old social media posts. When she left, the judge turned, not toward the former president, but toward his lawyer Todd Blanche.

“While the juror was at the podium, maybe 12 feet from your client, your client was audibly muttering something,” the judge said, his tone sharp. “He was audibly gesturing, speaking in the direction of the juror. I won’t tolerate that. I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear.”

“Yes, your honor,” Mr. Blanche said.

“Take a minute. Speak to your client about it,” the judge directed.

Mr. Blanche did.

Two days later, another juror was brought into the courtroom alone for questioning, one who had already been seated, but about whom prosecutors had become concerned, saying that he might have lied when responding to questions during the selection process.

It seemed like a discussion that might have interested the former president: He has expressed concern about the makeup of the jury and whether it can be fair.

But as the lawyers questioned the juror, and continued to discuss him after he had left the room, Mr. Trump sat silently at the defense table, looking very much like any other defendant.

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What happens if Trump is convicted?

However, nothing in the law requires Justice Merchan to imprison Mr. Trump, who is again the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, if he is convicted by a jury. The judge could instead sentence him to probation.

Further, if Mr. Trump is convicted, he will undoubtedly appeal, a process that could take months or longer.

Mr. Trump could first take the case to the Appellate Division in Manhattan, and, ultimately seek review from the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals in Albany.

In other words, any appeal is unlikely to be resolved before Election Day. And he would most likely remain free at least until the appeal is resolved.

Here’s the latest.

A spokesman for the court system, Al Baker, said the court schedule would not be affected, though, he added, “The entire court is impacted by this.”

Later in the day, the judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, heard arguments from both sides on whether the prosecution could bring up civil judgments against Mr. Trump during cross-examination if he testified, among them findings he lied about his company’s assets and sexually abused women. The judge’s ruling, which he said would come on Monday, could influence Mr. Trump’s decision on whether to take the stand.

The case stems from a hush-money payment made during the 2016 presidential campaign to a Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who at the time was threatening to go public with her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. The $130,000 payment came from Mr. Trump’s former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who has said he acted at Mr. Trump’s direction.

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, charged Mr. Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, accusing him of having disguised reimbursem*nts of Mr. Cohen to keep the sex scandal under wraps.

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty and has consistently denied having had sex with Ms. Daniels. If the jury convicts him, he faces up to four years behind bars.

Here’s what else to know:

• After jury selection was finished, Justice Merchan held what is known in New York as a Sandoval hearing to determine what questions prosecutors can ask Mr. Trump on cross-examination should he choose to testify. Prosecutors said they wanted to be free to ask Mr. Trump about recent lawsuits he has lost, including a civil jury finding that he had sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll.

• Justice Merchan has ordered news outlets not to report prospective jurors’ answers to two queries on a lengthy questionnaire: “Who is your current employer?” and “Who was your prior employer?” He has also directed that those answers be redacted from the transcript. Read more about the judge’s demands.

• Prosecutors on Thursday renewed their request that Justice Merchan hold Mr. Trump in contempt of court, arguing that the former president had repeatedly violated a gag order that bars him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and others. Justice Merchan said he would take up the matter next week.

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Five takeaways from the third day of Trump’s criminal trial.

Their work will be a unique challenge: the first prosecution of a former American president. Mr. Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records in an attempt to cover up a payment to a p*rn star, Stormy Daniels, who has said she had a brief sexual encounter with him in 2006. He has denied the charges; he could face probation or prison time if convicted.

Here are five takeaways from Mr. Trump’s third day on trial:

Things slowed down fast.

Court officials had earlier thought jury selection might take as long as two weeks. But hopes were high on Thursday that the 12 members might be seated by close of business after seven members were picked Tuesday. Justice Juan M. Merchan had suggested that, if the fast pace continued, the prosecution and defense would offer introductory remarks on Monday morning.

Then Thursday began as a slog, with both sides angling to gain any advantage, or — conversely — to get rid of any problems. For the prosecutors, that meant challenging a previously seated juror who they had discovered had credibility issues. Justice Merchan spent a long sidebar discussing the issue with lawyers from both sides and the juror. In the end, the juror was excused.

By lunchtime, the jury was shrinking, not growing.

They sped up fast, too.

Justice Merchan was quick to get back on track. After 18 potential jurors were seated in the jury box, he kept them moving as they navigated a lengthy questionnaire with Mr. Trump looking on.

After lawyers on both sides had spent 30 minutes each quizzing them, Justice Merchan gave the lawyers about a half-hour to prepare challenges — both for cause, which require lawyers to give reasons, and peremptory challenges that can be made without explanation.

But with both sides having limited peremptory challenges, and Merchan unwilling to strike many jurors for cause, the panel filled up fast.

Trump was still driving people from the jury.

Ninety-six additional prospective jurors were called in on Thursday and asked whether they had a problem with being impartial. Dozens said they did and were dismissed.

That attrition speaks to the difficulties that lawyers have faced in finding people who feel they can be fair in a trial of a man who inspires strong emotions. And there were second thoughts: Several potential jurors told the judge that they would be impartial, only to later admit that they simply could not.

There were also moments of unintentional hilarity: One potential juror, who had said she could be fair, was confronted by the defense team over social media posts she’d made in the past, including one in which she called Mr. Trump a racist and a sexist.

Reading it aloud, she stopped.

“Oops,” she said. “That sounds bad.”

She was excused.

The judge is concerned about the press.

Justice Merchan, a veteran jurist, has overseen trials that attracted great public interest. But there has been nothing to compare with Mr. Trump’s trial, which has drawn scores of reporters to the courthouse. That swarm has been quick to report and post even the smallest developments, including personal details that potential jurors offered up during selection.

On Thursday, that eagerness earned a rebuke from the judge, who cited press coverage that revealed details about a juror as part of the reason she said she could not serve. He said she “probably would have been a very good juror.”

Justice Merchan seemed particularly annoyed by reporters’ firsthand observations, asking them to “refrain from writing about anything that you observe with your eyes and hear with your ears related to the jurors that’s not on the record.”

He also suggested sterner steps if those rules were broken.

“If you can’t do that, if we can’t stick to that, we will have to see what else we need to do to ensure that the jurors remain safe,” Justice Merchan said.

The jury is as diverse as New York.

The 12 members of the panel, seven men and five women, reflect the diversity of Manhattan.

Mr. Trump grew up in Queens. But he made his name in Manhattan, literally putting “Trump” on his buildings. He reveled in a brash love-him-or-hate-him reputation, an outsize figure in an outsize city. He bestrode the tabloid newspapers and craved headlines and front pages.

But then many New Yorkers turned against him after he declared he would run for president in 2015 and voiced right wing views.

In 2020, he declared himself a Florida resident.

He returned to Manhattan under duress and under indictment. His fate will now be in the hands of New Yorkers.