Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
The first seven jurors for Donald Trump's hush money trial were seated Tuesday after lawyers grilled the jury pool about their social media posts, political views and personal lives to decide who can sit in fair judgment of the former president.
The panelists who were selected are an information technology worker, an English teacher, an oncology nurse, a sales professional, a software engineer and two lawyers.
Eleven more people still must be sworn in before opening statements begin as early as next week in the first criminal trial of a former commander in chief. It's a moment of reckoning for Trump, who has tried to put off his prosecutions until after the November election and casts himself as the victim of a politically motivated justice system.
The trial puts Trump's legal problems at the centre of his closely contested race against President Joe Biden. It's the first of Trump's four criminal cases to reach trial, and it may be the only one to return a verdict before voters decide whether to elect the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
The methodical process unfolding in the Manhattan courtroom highlights the challenge of finding people who can fairly judge the polarizing defendant in the city where he built his real estate empire before being elected president in 2016. Even so, jury selection moved quicker than expected Tuesday afternoon. It was set to resume Thursday.
On his way out of the courthouse, Trump stopped in the hallway to rail against the case to reporters, accusing Judge Juan Merchan of "rushing" the trial. He has denied any wrongdoing.
"We are going to continue our fight against this judge," said Trump, who pushed unsuccessfully to have Merchan removed from the case.
During an appearance later Tuesday at a bodega in Harlem, Trump was asked what he thought of the jurors he had seen. He said it was "a little bit early to see," adding, "We'll see what happens."
Over two days, dozens of potential jurors have been excused after saying they could not be impartial or because they had other commitments. Trump's lawyers challenged a handful of people over social media posts, and one person was dismissed over a 2017 post about Trump that said "Lock him up!"
Several would-be jurors told the judge they believed they could decide the case fairly, no matter their feelings about Trump or his policies as president.
Trump looked on in the courtroom as potential jurors -- whose names are known only to prosecutors, Trump and their legal teams -- shared details of their lives and impressions of him. The judge admonished Trump at one point after he spoke loudly and gestured while the judge questioned one woman about a social media post.
"I don't know what he was uttering, but it was audible and he was gesturing. And he was speaking in the direction of the juror," Merchan said. "I won't tolerate that. I will not tolerate any jurors being intimidated in this courtroom."
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass took Trump's notoriety head-on, telling the jury pool that attorneys were not looking for people who had been "living under a rock for the past eight years." They just needed to keep an open mind.
"This case has nothing to do with your personal politics...it's not a referendum on the Trump presidency or a popularity contest or who you're going to vote for in November. We don't care. This case is about whether this man broke the law," he said.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged effort to keep salacious -- and, he says, bogus -- stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaign.
With the trial expected to last for six weeks or more, several jury pool members brought up plans they have for Memorial Day and beyond.
One man was excused after saying he feared his ability to be impartial could be compromised by "unconscious bias" from growing up in Texas and working in finance with people who "intellectually tend to slant Republican."
"I'm not sure that I can say beyond a reasonable doubt that I can be fair," another person told the judge. "I can try. But I'm not 100 per cent sure I can be fair." She was also dismissed.
One person chosen to sit on the jury said he found Trump "fascinating," adding that he "walks into a room and he sets people off one way or another."
Another woman said she disagrees with Trump's policies and sometimes finds herself frustrated by him. But she pledged to be fair and impartial, telling defence lawyer Todd Blanche that she would give her "level-headed best" if she were picked for the jury.
"I didn't sleep last night thinking about could I do that," she said.
Trump broke into a grin, nodding his head in an exaggerated manner, when one person said he had read two of the former president's books, "The Art of the Deal" and "How to Get Rich." The man, who said some of his wife's family members are lobbyists for the Republican Party, said he didn't think there was anything that would prevent him from looking at the case fairly.
"I feel that no one's above the law," he said.
The charges centre on US$130,000 in payments that Trump's company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on Trump's behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the encounter ever happened.
Prosecutors say the payments to Cohen were falsely logged as legal fees. The prosecution has described the money as being part of a scheme to bury damaging stories Trump feared could help his opponent in the 2016 race, particularly as Trump's reputation was suffering at the time from comments he made about women.
Trump has acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for the payment and that it was designed to stop Daniels from going public about the alleged encounter. But Trump has said it had nothing to do with the campaign. He hinted Tuesday at the defence his legal team will mount, telling reporters: "I was paying a lawyer and marked it down as a legal expense."
"That's exactly what it was. And you get indicted over that?" Trump said.
If convicted of falsifying business records, Trump faces up to four years in prison, though there's no guarantee he will get time behind bars.
Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Ruth Brown, Philip Marcelo and Jill Colvin in New York contributed.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
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Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.