2023-06-18 07:00:03
As a registered voter in Palm Beach County, Florida, Bette Anne Starkey knows she could be chosen to serve on the jury in Federal criminal case against former President Donald Trump. But even though she voted twice for Trump, she can’t say how she would assess the case as a juror.
reproducing quotes from Trump himself, Starkey, an 81-year-old accountant, used the phrase “witch hunt” in an interview to describe the federal charge against the former president, that he knowingly withdrew confidential White House documents. But she also struggles to understand why Trump simply didn’t return the documents when asked, which is part of her irritation with the 45th American president: “I’m tired of hearing about his trickery.”
His comments reflect the complicated feelings Trump currently stirs, even among the Republicans who voted for him. But Starkey is also a reflection of the equally complicated and volatile politics of South Florida, the home of Trump and the jury panel.
It is in diverse and densely populated South Florida that Trump’s jurors will be summoned if the case goes to trial, although the exact location and jury have not been determined.
The lawsuit ended up in the West Palm Beach judicial division of the Southern District of Florida, which means that the jury can be selected from registered voters in Palm Beach County, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, in which he has since left the White House. Trump lost Palm Beach County to President Joe Biden by nearly 13 percentage points in 2020.
But a grand jury made up of voters from Miami-Dade County, south of Palm Beach, is also a possibility, especially if it is determined that the Miami federal courthouse, which Trump appeared before on June 13, is better equipped. to accommodate what will likely be one of the highest-profile criminal trials in American history.
Trump lost Miami-Dade by only about seven points in the last election, drawing strong support from Hispanic voters in particular; more than two-thirds of county residents identify as Hispanic, according to census data.
But both counties have become more Republican in recent years, and Republican candidates have had significant success in statewide races. Trump won Florida in 2016 and 2020, and the state has twice elected Governor Ron DeSantis, currently Trump’s main rival for the Republican presidential nomination.
All of this should provide some relief for members of Trump’s defense team, who know it only takes one vote to result in a suspended jury. And many South Florida residents, as well as Americans elsewhere in the country, believe Trump is the victim of unfair treatment by powerful forces on the political left.
George Cadman, 54, a realtor and father of two who lives in southern Miami-Dade County, said he had not followed the news closely in recent months and had not heard about the federal charges against Trump. – which makes him, in a way, a good candidate for jury service. But he also said he supports Trump “one hundred percent” and that he thinks previous investigations into the former president were politically motivated. Adding that he believes Russia’s 2016 election meddling and the Trump-Ukraine scandal were frauds, he said, referring to the new case against Trump: “I would be very cautious in deciding what I think about that.” (In a subsequent phone call, Cadman revealed that as much as he loved Trump, he planned to vote for Biden in 2024 because rising property values had been good for his job as a real estate agent.)
Many South Florida Cuban-Americans discovered the impact of politics, even on apolitical life, the hard way, during the Cuban Revolution and beyond. And for some of the conservatives among them, like Modesto Estrada, a retired businessman who arrived in Miami 18 years ago, it is worth supporting Trump as a powerful brake on the Democrats and liberal policies that he says are “ruining the country” by discourage people from working.
Estrada, 71, noted that Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence were also caught with confidential government documents. (But by all accounts so far, Biden returned the documents to authorities after discovering them, as did Pence.) Like many people interviewed, Estrada said he would have a hard time being an impartial juror in the case. “From my point of view, so far there is nothing against him. And nothing will happen to him. Trump is not going to jail. The case will fall apart and that’s what I hope.”
Just as Estrada said his experience with a left-wing dictatorship had influenced his hope that Trump would be found innocent, Viviana Dominguez, 63, referred to her own experience in her native Argentina, which was led by a right-wing military dictatorship. from 1976 to 1983, when expressing his dislike of Trump. An art conservator who has lived in Miami for 13 years, she called Trump “embarrassing”, adding: “I think he’s going to jail, but I don’t know if that’s just wishful thinking.”
Dominguez described the case for the documents, and Trump’s still sizable support base, as an unsettling loosening of civic standards: “We saw all this in Argentina, when the lies got bigger and bigger. The margin of tolerance got bigger and bigger. , in such a way that you never saw the limit. They talked about morality and family, but they were the most corrupt and obscene people in the world. It’s like a state of madness.”
Roderick Clelland, a 78-year-old Vietnam War veteran from West Palm Beach, the most populous city in Palm Beach County, said he was concerned about the international implications of what he saw as Trump’s lax attitude toward sensitive national secrets: “The whole world is watching us. And some of these documents about other countries – are they going to trust us? We’ve had people arrested for less than that. So you can’t just break the law and get away with it. I hope there is a penalty.” Clelland was careful to note that he doesn’t hate Trump. “But I don’t like his behavior and attitude.”
Although she voted for Trump twice, Starkey, who is secretary of the Palm Beaches Republican Club, said she was never a big fan. But in both 2016 and 2020, she failed to support the more liberal candidate. Today, she is considering voting for Nikki Haley, a former UN ambassador and Republican governor of South Carolina. She remarked that she was only speaking for herself and not for her club.
Still, he said Trump’s indictment seems like a partisan move at a time when American politics lacks much of the two-party harmony that it once had, which he fondly remembers. This, she says, is one of the reasons why she would struggle if she were chosen for the jury in the case: “Do you trust that you are getting all the facts for and against?” She said she is exasperated by the drama surrounding the allegation – and that she knows there are a lot of people like her. “I just want this to be over.”
c. 2023 The New York Times Company
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