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Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over former President Donald Trump’s hush money case in Manhattan, dismissed a juror Thursday morning after she said parts of her identity have been made public already, CNN reported.

The outlet noted that there are now six jurors empaneled for the trial.

“Aspects of my identity have already been out there in the public. Yesterday alone, I had friends, colleagues, and family push things to my phone, questioning my identity as a juror,” she told the court.

Merchan then turned to the press monitoring and reporting on the proceedings, telling them, “There’s a reason this is an anonymous jury.”

“We just lost what probably would’ve been a very good juror,” Merchan said, adding that the potential juror said she was “afraid” and felt intimated by the media.

Merchan has stated that he agrees with the defense regarding the significance of acquiring information about the potential jurors’ employers. However, he has decided to have the responses to questions 3a and 3d related to the jurors’ occupation redacted from the court record.

Additionally, he has instructed the press present in the courtroom and overflow area not to report the answers to the aforementioned questions.

“It’s become a problem,” he said.

CNN noted that the questions ask: Who is your current employer and who is your previous employer?

Another potential juror who was dismissed from Trump’s case on Tuesday described the “jarring” experience with the former president seated nearby as prosecutors and defense lawyers questioned her.

Jury selection for Trump’s hush money trial commenced on Monday in Manhattan. Kara McGee, who was dismissed after being screened for the potential jury pool, shared with MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard that she realized Trump was “just another guy” whose fate the jury could alter “forever.”

“What was that like answering questions, including some about Donald Trump, as he is sitting thirty feet from you?” Vaughn asked McGee.

“It was odd,” McGee said. “It was such an interesting experience because it’s — I had never seen him in person before, you know. And you, you see someone blown up so larger than life on the media for so many years, um — to see them in person is very jarring. Um, and, you get the sense that, ‘oh, this is just another guy.’ And also he sees me talking about him, which is bizarre.”

“Did you make eye contact with him?” the MSNBC News correspondent queried.

“Yes. Yeah,” she responded.

“At what point?” Vaughn asked. “When was that —”

“Uh, I believe right before I started to read off the questionnaire and right after I finished, before I got up to go when I was dismissed,” McGee said.

“Did it add another level of nervousness or tension that you felt with him sitting there?” Vaughn pressed.

“I think so,” McGee responded. “It, it made the whole thing feel more real in a way because I guess when you’re on any jury, you have elements of that person’s future in your hands. Um, so whether it was Trump, or whether it was some stranger off the street in Manhattan who I had never heard of before, um, if you commit to sitting on the jury — you can change that person’s life forever.”

At another point, McGee confessed that she was “not a fan” of the former president and appeared to blame him for the spreading of the COVID-19 virus.

“I’m not a fan,” McGee added of her personal thoughts on Trump. “During COVID-19, I lived with someone who was immunocompromised, and I think his handling of COVID-19 was abysmal,” she said.

With a 6-8 week trial duration anticipated overall, jury selection may take up to two weeks.

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