Jury selection began on Monday in the Trump hush money trial. It is clear that if his name was not Trump and if he was not running for president, this trial would not be going forward. 

The presiding judge in this trial is New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan. He is a Democrat, a Democrat donor, and his daughter is well-known in Democrat circles as a very successful fundraiser for Democrats. All those facts need to be voiced because it goes to why this trial is happening in the first place. 

As the first day of voir dire began, Judge Merchan announced that the Trump legal team requested that the former president be allowed to be excused from being in court on May 17. He asked to be allowed to travel to Florida to attend his son Barron's high school graduation. 

Merchan stated that he would not make a decision right away regarding Trump’s request to postpone the trial and move it to a different day. “It really depends on if we are on time and where we are in the trial,” Merchan said.

He said it may take up to two weeks for jury selection. Trump will be allowed to know the names of those who are picked as jurors but the public will not. He framed it as a security issue for the jurors.

The judge has instructed Trump that he must be in the courtroom every day or he risks arrest. So what should he do if the judge denies him skipping that one day so that he can fly to Florida and attend his son's graduation? When the court day was finished, Trump came out and told the press what happened.

“As you know, my son is graduating from high school and it looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son, who has worked very, very hard,” Trump explained to reporters on Monday afternoon. “He was looking forward, for years, to that graduation with his mother and father there, and it looks like the judge isn’t going to allow me to escape this scam.”

The judge may be a Trump-deranged partisan hack but not allowing Trump's absence for one day seems cruel and unusual. Trump is 77 years old and Barron is his youngest child. Will Trump be around for Barron's college graduation? No one knows the answer.

Trump has been denied the opportunity to attend the Supreme Court hearing and hear arguments on April 25. “Your client is a criminal defendant. He’s required to be here. We will see him here next week.” That decision seems unfortunate but it doesn't have the impact that Trump missing Barron's graduation would have, it seems to me. 

Outside the courtroom, Trump continued his remarks.

“We had some amazing things happen today as you know, my son has graduated from high school and it looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son, who’s worked very, very hard, he’s a great student, very proud of the fact he did so well and was looking forward for years to have graduation with his mother and father there,” Trump stated. 

Subsequently, Trump criticized the accusations against him and disparaged the judge and prosecutors.

“It’s a scam trial,” Trump asserted.

“If you read all of the legal pundits, all of the legal scholars today, there’s not one that I see that said this is a case that should be brought to a trial. It’s a scam. It’s a political witch hunt. It continues, it continues forever, and we’re not gonna be given a fair trial. It’s a very, very sad thing. In addition, as you know, next Thursday we’re before the United States Supreme Court in a very big hearing on immunity. And this is something that we’ve been waiting for a long time and the judge, of course, is not going to allow us, he’s a very conflicted judge and he’s not going to allow us to go to that,” Trump continued.

To be clear, the judge said he has not made his decision yet on the graduation request. Trump sounds as though he assumes that the judge will not grant the request. Why wouldn't he make that assumption? 

The judge said it is too early to decide because he wanted to see how the trial was moving along. 

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Before that, Cy Vance declined to bring a case against Trump because he knew there wasn't reason to do so. Bragg bumped up the misdemeanor charges to a federal crime to ramp up the seriousness of the charges. All the while, Bragg boasts about his previous legal work against the Trump administration. Bragg is fundraising off the case. 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg collected a cool $850,000 in donations after indicting former President Donald Trump last March — with powerful Democrats and left-leaning labor unions cheering on the prosecution with their wallets, records show.

In the most recent campaign filing period, Bragg’s re-election campaign received $481,203 in donations from July 12, 2023 through Jan. 12 — $100,000 more than the $374,785 raised during the prior six-month period.

I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you. I'm inclined to say that Trump should attend his son's graduation regardless of what the judge decides. Let him decide to arrest Trump or not. If he did, Trump would likely win even bigger than I think he will in November. At least half of the country would be outraged that Trump, as a father, was arrested for showing support to his youngest child.