The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion You served on Donald Trump’s jury. You lost everything.

You are nothing without your peers. Yours, and other people’s. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)
6 min

Donald Trump is on civil trial for defamation in New York City as we speak, and thanks to the many threats Trump and his supporters have made, the jurors are reportedly experiencing their own ordeal.

Politico journalist Erica Orden tweeted that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan “explains to prospective jurors that this will be an anonymous jury, meaning no one including the parties, their lawyers, reporters or even the judge will know their real names. He also suggests they speak to each other using names other than their real ones.”

Over the course of the trial, the jurors will be picked up at a series of undisclosed locations and then driven to the court and brought in through the underground garage. They were instructed, Orden reported, not to “tell anyone, including family, that they are serving on this case.”

DAY 1: You are waiting at the designated meeting spot with Kim, Thunderbolt and Striker.