very relevant issue. but look at the substantive areas where he has been found to be civilly liable. one has to do with misconduct in business records, which is a big issue in this case, and the other has to do with a defamation case based on sexual assault, which is relevant, perhaps, to the stormy daniels allegations as well. i suspect what the judge is going to do is he is going to allow some of that in, and he may say you can t get this in unless donald trump opens the door in his testimony and makes it more relevant. so it s going to be a tough decision for the defense. carol, vaughn, please stay close. joyce, thank you so much. turning back to the middle east and the other breaking news this morning, israel s retaliation against iran, does this upend the diplomatic order? also ahead, the growing republican rift over foreign aid that could potentially rip the house in two and spell the end of speaker johnson s time with
everyone s concerned there might be a stealth juror in the mix, a injury who says they can be fair but is really in the tank for one side or the other. these are skillful lawyers on both sides, the cumulative experience on the prosecution team is very impressive. this is their job to detect jurors who aren t telling the truth to protect the integrity of the jury. we saw that happen earlier this week when the d.a. s team came back and questioned juror number four, had found information that they felt like that juror had not revealed and had that juror removed. we do know their professions, this is a highly educated group. you ve got a teacher. you ve got a couple of lawyers, a couple of engineers, a speech therapist, a physical therapist. polls have shown when it comes to voters, this demographic is sort of a weak spot for trump. carol, if you re his defense team, does that give you pause? it does give one pause because one of the, i think, consequences of having not only
to mention. they allowed for five extra minutes in the voir dire process, i know you and carol were just talking about that, because of the 22 jurors that are not in that box, although now it s down to 20 because two have subsequently been excused. one other thing i think we should keep in mind in looking to monday on a time line for opening remarks, and that is the possibility that we could have jurors show up on monday morning after having gone over the weekend, worried about that anxiety, fear of their identities. in, being revealed. showing up on monday morning and saying i m worried about this. i don t know if i can necessarily do this. that s something to keep in the back of our minds and looking at that time line and those possible opening remarks on monday morning. yasmin vossoughian, carol lam and joyce vance, thank you. don t go too far. we ll check back as we keep our eyes on that manhattan courthouse. we are also following breaking news in the middle east this morning as
carol, just how unusual is this? it s a little bit unusual for the following reasons. it s certainly unusual for a judge to suggest that the lawyer doesn t have complete client control, which is what judge merchan was saying, but i think that we have all seen that unfortunately that that is true, not to blame the defense attorneys, but donald trump does what donald trump wants to do. the courtesy of the telling the other side who the next witness or few witnesses are going to be, that is a courtesy that s generally extended because each party wants the other party to extend the same courtesy to them. in this case, the prosecution has said with what they believe to be violations of the gag order that have taken place, they re not going to extend that courtesy. that makes it tough for the defense in a couple of ways, one obviously they don t know which witness to prepare for. i mean, they re prepared for all the witnesses, but it s always a little different when you know exactly who is
the jurors were instructed to answer the questions on the questionnaires, and he really only gave the parties a half hour. some judges give the parties hours or even days to ask questions of the jurors. so he s moved quickly, but i think the one of the consequences of that is that they don t have time to delve as deeply into issues and so now we see where there s a break in the trial, we see the parties coming up with some issues once they ve had an opportunity to research these jurors a little bit more deeply. and so joyce, do you see any red flags on this jury for either side? well, i think one of the important things we re seeing, ana, is that we don t know as much about these jurors as we might in a typical case because the judge is using an anonymous jury procedure, and we can all understand the need for that. so if to carol s point, there s not only a lack of public information that s afternoonly amplified, i think