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again, we don't know exactly what the motivation is here, and we're not going to speculate on that, but we do want to get back to the very big news inside. and let me get your impressions now that there is a panel. we have the 12 jurors. we have the six alternates, lisa. what stood out to you from the time you spent in the courthouse today? >> i would say, chris, this is a day i would characterize is about pressure and feelings and anxiety. if that's been building all week, we really saw that come to a head today. we saw least four jurors essentially say today that they could notto serve because their anxiety or their nervousness. one of them was someone who said that her father had a relationship with someone who previously, aso high profile person who had a relationship with former president trump and whenor questioned by the defens that person just felt the pressure was too much forst the.
needed to complete the jury. the process appeared to move faster than expected yesterday after two jurors seated on tuesday were excused at the start of the proceedings. one said she was not sure if she could remain impartial after identifying information about her was made public. another was excused following concerns from prosecutors that one of his answers during questioning was not accurate. if no other jurors are excused and five more alternates are selected, jury selection should wrap up today. judge juan merchan said he is hopeful that opening arguments will then begin on monday. joining us now, former litigator and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. lisa, what stood out to you yesterday in terms of the jury selection process? it seems to be on track. this judge is really trying to keep things tight. i'm also curious your reaction to donald trump's response to
who was in the room at that time? >> in the courtroom itself, there would have been six pool reporters, one sketch artist. there are the lawyers from each respective team. obviously the defendant, and then all of thean prospective jurors, they had just announced which ones of those who had not yet been excused would be chosen to serve as alternates and told them what seat would be theirs and with that, i think that they were then excused and let go. but it was a little bit unclear, yeah? >> i also think, you know, one thing, just to paint a bit of a picture about the judge. you know, we were -- we covered, lisa and i together covered the civil trial where donald trump was involved, and the judge was there, but had a clerk next to him, and there was a lot of communication going on w and ofn that clerk was able to communicate information to the judge. that doesn't happen here. so the judge is alone on that
alternating with high emotions, it was ath roller coaster of a y emotionally, and punctuated by the news of this gentleman setting himself on fire in the park directly across the street from the court in full view of all of the cameras here to cover this historic event. >> i think the other complication we're going to be dealing with. lisa alluded to it is the secret service. you have a former president of thepr united states inside who s secret as much as protection and a major incident has happened right when he's sitting in court. i don't know how they're going to respond. we're going to be watching for that. but i can't imagine that that's not going to complicate things this afternoon, and even as we're going forward, those are the sort of things i'm thinking about this as we're taking in awful news. >> i want to bring in msnbc legal analyst, catherine christian and charles coleman. lisa said it well for what happens after the lunch break, all bets arete off.
know, the judge is not going to say i don't care. so i'm sure those conversations, there's a head person who's in charge of the court officers and there's going to be a supervisors and a conversation. this may have had nothing whatsoever to do with former president trump, but it's still a very concerning incident that happened literally across the building from where he is at. >> catherine, charles, lisa, sue, i can't imagine better people to have this conversation with, and our thanks to yasmin vossoughian. again, we're going to continue our coverage of this breaking news that is happening just as judge juan merchans of -- merchan was announcing they had a full jury, 12 jurors and six alternates, outside the courthouse, a person set themselves on fire which immediately brought a huge response. now the question is just about an hour from now when the lunch break is expected to be over, what will happen, what will this
what dobe you imagine the considerations are now for judge juan merchan. >> i've worked down right in the building across from 100 center street for over 30 years. nothing like this has ever happened.ha no one has set themselves on fire. we have had protests, there's clearly crime downtown lower manhattan. but this is a first. so the courthouse security are the court officersou and the perimeter. outside is nypd. now, this happened across the street next to another courthouse. 111 center street. so i'm sure that more security is going to be ramped up, also by nypd because of what happened. and because this is a former president of the united states. just to tag on to what lisa and suzanne said, once the jurors, these alternates were sworn in, they would have been told
he went to this location because this is a spot where he'll get attention for whatever his issue is. he could burn himself up behind a warehouse in newark, and it's not going to make the news. it's not going to be on the news. when he goes to the trump trial, just like going to the front of the white house or the capitol and the supreme court or an embassy, and you set yourself on fire like a man did two months ago at the israeli embassy in washington, d.c. to protest the war in gaza, lit himself on fire and died. so that's why they're attracted to these locations. it may not have anything to do with trump or the trump trial at all. it may. it could. it also could be the location of the center of attention of the country in the world. >> whether it does or not, yasmin, as we were discussing with our lawyers and the folks on scene, lisa and sue earlier, the question is what impact this will have on the trial, what impact will it have on that
going forward or it could stay smooth. it's been two different kinds of weeks, it seems to me. >> if you were prosecuting this case, who would you call first? because there are different ways to do it. michael cohen was at the start of the catch and kill trial, as was david pecker from the national enquirer. or they could go back and start with stormy daniels. what would you anticipate being that first witness? >> yeah, it's a great and big question. cohen, they said, is going to be the sort of tour guide, but i think it would be a mistake and they won't start with him. my best guess is pecker. they'll start through macdougal and set things up for either that or a very sort of banal witness that just goes through paperwork. i think they'll start with low emotional intensity but then try to frame the story and have cohen somewhere in the middle. you don't want him as the last, you don't want him as the first. >> and give us a sense of what we should expect to see, lisa, on monday morning at 9:30 sharp.
and arson experts. people do this to themselves but the point here is the person traveled from florida all the way to the trump trial. this is not connected to trump, it has really nothing to do with him. i read all his writings he posted. it's nonsensical, as yasmin clearly reported. it doesn't make sense. he named every politician, every hollywood person, every billionaire, every person on the news, every name he can think of. he tied them all together in some crackpot conspiracy theory. he's a disturbed person. it doesn't make any sense. i think the good part of that, though, is hopefully the judge will take a look at that, to reassure his jurors that this was not directed at the trial, at mr. trump, at them, at the court family. i hope he takes the time to do that. i would even say, you know, to the judge, consider letting the jurors read his rantings which are only a couple pages. once you read it, you will be
person, another witness that saw this all go down, that he initially had knelt down, and we learned this from officers as well during the press conference. he reached into his backpack, and he had thrown up into the air a ton of papers. then he had doused himself in fluid, in lighter fluid of some sort. he had used a lighter then to light himself on fire. on those papers were wide ranging conspiracy theories, honestly. none of it made sense. it was all nonsensical. it was political, some was about the mob, some was about various universities here in new york as well as throughout the country. they were wide ranging conspiracy theories. whether or not that is what motivated this individual to do that, we don't know. but it was a shocking moment. juxtaposing that to what we were also reporting on at that very moment, which was empanelling a jury to sit and decide the fate of the ex-president of the united states.