Former President Donald Trump is calling for his criminal case to move from Manhattan to Staten Island, where Trump had 57% share of the vote in the 2020 election. The request could be tied to an attempt to find impartial jurors. Professor Claire Finkelstein told Bloomberg last week the key for his lawyers will be identifying and removing those who are strongly anti-Trump from the jury selection. According to Prof. Finkelstein:
Trump has a right to a jury of his peers — that does not mean a jury of Trump supporters. His lawyers have the right to strike anyone who appears to be unable to exercise independent judgment on the case based on the facts and the law presented.
Claire Finkelstein is Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. She is founder and faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL), a non-partisan interdisciplinary institute affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC). She is a distinguished research fellow at APPC and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). Her current research addresses national security law and policy, democratic governance, and professional ethics. Read her bio here.