Left: Late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gestures while speaking as he leaves an EU summit in Brussels, Friday Dec. 12, 2008. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe). Right: Donald Trump listens during a roundtable with industry executives about reopening country after the coronavirus closures, May 29, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
As a jury is still in the process of being selected in Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money and election interference trial in New York, one prospective juror was dismissed after he reportedly told the court that as a native Italian, he couldn’t be impartial because the former president reminded him too much of the sex scandal-ridden former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The New York Times noted the excusal in a post to X, formerly Twitter, midafternoon on Thursday as prosecutors under Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and defense attorneys for the former president met for the third day to select and seat jurors and alternates.
The comparison is not entirely unreasonable: the late Berlusconi was a media tycoon also drenched in a number of scandals featuring both sex and corruption.
“The Italian media have had a very strong association with Mr. Trump and Silvio Berlusconi,” the man said, according to NBC. “It would be a little hard for me to retain my impartiality and fairness.”
Berlusconi, once Italy’s richest man, died last June. He faced more than two dozen criminal trials in his lifetime and endured a number of investigations into his philandering — including allegations about his notorious “Bunga Bunga” sex party encounters with minors, Reuters reported — and despite it all, he overcame the charges in all but one instance.
That was when Berlusconi was convicted of tax fraud in 2013. His sentence of four years in prison was affirmed by the leading Italian court and then three years of that sentence was pardoned. He completed some of his sentence via community service. He was temporarily banned from political office but he eventually returned to power as a lawmaker in the European Parliament first and then later, he served in Italy’s Senate.
Just a day ago, seven jurors were seated but by Thursday morning, two from that group were ultimately excused and the search continued. One seated juror was excused over concerns about their personal identity being publicly disclosed and the other was excused after arriving to the courthouse late Thursday and amid concerns over their truthfulness, the Independent reported.
Trump is facing 34 felony counts in New York and he is still in legal peril in venues in Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C. Bragg alleges that Trump falsified records in order to conceal that he paid his onetime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen $130,000 to reimburse a payment in the same amount to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. This and another hush-money scheme happened near the end of the 2016 election, Bragg says. Trump is also accused of paying former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 in exchange for her agreeing to keep silent about an alleged sexual relationship.
Trump has stated that he did not do anything wrong.