No, there’s nothing to this “juror’s cousin” storyline in Donald Trump’s criminal trial

| 7:22 pm EDT June 7, 2024
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Now that Donald Trump has been found guilty in his criminal trial and the serious headlines are on pause until we get closer to sentencing, we’re getting into that “silly season” where sheer utter nonsense gets focused on as if it were something important.

For instance, there’s a big controversy today about how someone on Facebook claimed to be a juror’s cousin and announced just before the verdict that Trump was definitely going to be convicted. But it’s already turned out that the person who made the post is a self identified prankster and that the whole thing is almost certainly made-up nonsense.

Judge Merchan has duly notified both parties in the trial about the post. But it’s not going to go anywhere, because it’s pretty obviously going to turn out that this prankster was not a juror’s cousin. Yet because there’s no real news going on right now with regard to Trump’s legal troubles, this non-story has filled the vacuum.

Trump supporters, who always seem to think that Trump is winning no matter how poorly things are going for him, have decided that this “controversy” is somehow going to result in a mistrial. And a lot of anti-Trump people, who are for some reason always looking for an excuse to yell “we’re doomed,” have also decided that this storyline means Trump is going to get away with it all.

But back in the real world, this isn’t anything. If this Facebook post had really come from a juror’s cousin, it would be a story. But you can immediately look at the context and see that this wasn’t the case, which means this is a non-story that’ll have zero impact on anything. But hey, happy Friday.