PRAIRIELAND TRIAL UPDATE - Trump appointed judge to lead jury selection aka voir dire
If you don’t know what voir dire is: it’s jury selection — the part where lawyers and the judge question potential jurors to uncover bias and weed out people who can’t be fair.
What’s normal: lawyers get real time to ask jurors questions (often directly), follow up, and build a record about bias. It’s messy on purpose, because bias is messy.
What’s happening here: Judge Pittman is running voir dire himself. Lawyers can only submit questions for him to maybe ask, and they can’t ask jurors directly. That’s a huge control point in a case where the entire fight is about narrative and political framing.
And it’s not just jury selection:
Opening statements: capped at 8 minutes per defendant
Trial time: capped at 35 hours TOTAL for all defendants (while the U.S. gets 35 hours)
That’s not “keeping things efficient.” That’s compressing the defense in a high-stakes case.
THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
@dfwsupportcommittee