As a registered voter in Palm Beach County, Fla., Bette Anne Starkey knows there is a possibility she could be chosen to serve on a jury in the federal criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump. But even though she’s a two-time Trump voter, she can’t really say how she’d lean as a juror weighing the case.
Following Mr. Trump himself, Ms. Starkey, an 81-year-old bookkeeper, used the phrase “witch hunt” in an interview to describe the federal indictment against the former president, accusing him of knowingly stealing secret documents from the White House. to delete . But she’s also struggling to understand why Mr. Trump didn’t just return the documents when asked, part of her simmering irritation with the 45th president.
“I’m tired of hearing all his swear words,” she said.
Her remarks reflect the complicated feelings Mr. Trump can evoke these days, even among Republicans who voted for him. But Ms. Starkey is also a reflection of the equally complicated, volatile politics of South Florida, home of Mr. Trump, and the jury pool it provides.
It is in diverse, densely populated South Florida that a jury of colleagues of Mr. Trump will be called to determine his innocence or guilt if the case ever goes to trial, although the exact trial site and jury pool are not known. certain.
The case was filed in West Palm Beach District Court in Florida’s Southern District, meaning the jury could be chosen from registered voters in Palm Beach County, home of Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where he has lived since his departure. the White House. Mr. Trump lost Palm Beach County to President Biden by nearly 13 percentage points in 2020.
But a jury pool made up of voters from Miami-Dade County, south of Palm Beach, is also a possibility, especially if it is determined that the federal courthouse in Miami, where Mr. Trump is expected to make his first appearance Tuesday, is the best equipped to handle what will likely become one of the most high-profile criminal trials in American history.
Mr. Trump lost Miami-Dade by only about seven points in the last election, drawing strong support from Hispanic voters in particular; more than two-thirds of the county’s residents identify as Hispanic, according to census data.
However, both counties have become more Republican in recent years, and Republican candidates have enjoyed significant success in statewide races. Mr. Trump won Florida in both 2016 and 2020, and the state has twice elected Governor Ron DeSantis, currently Mr. Trump’s main rival for the Republican presidential nomination.
All of this should provide some comfort to members of Trump’s defense team, who know it only takes one vote to result in a hung jury. And many South Florians, like Americans elsewhere in the country, believe that Mr. Trump is the victim of unfair treatment at the hands of powerful forces on the political left.
George Cadman, 54, is a real estate agent and father of two, who said he hasn’t been following the news closely in recent months. He said he hadn’t heard about the federal charges against Mr. Trump, which in a sense made him a good candidate for jury service.
But Mr. Cadman, who lives in southern Miami-Dade County, also said he supports Trump “100 percent” and believes previous investigations into Mr. Trump were politically motivated.
He added that he believes Russian interference in the 2016 election and the scandal over Mr Trump and Ukraine were hoaxes. Mr. Trump.
(In a subsequent phone call, Mr. Cadman said that as much as he loved Mr. Trump, he planned to vote for President Biden in 2024 because rising real estate values had been good for his work as a broker.)
Many of South Florida’s Cuban Americans learned the hard way about the impact of politics on even apolitical lives during and after the Cuban Revolution. And for some of the conservatives among them, like Modesto Estrada, a retiree businessman who arrived in Miami 18 years ago, Mr. Trump is worth supporting as a powerful drag on Democrats and liberal policies that Mr. Estrada said “ruined the country” by discouraging people from working.
Mr Estrada, 71, noted that Mr Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence also had sensitive government documents in their possession. (Mr. Biden has so far returned the documents to authorities after discovering them, as has Mr. Pence.) Like many people interviewed, Mr Estrada said he would have a hard time being an impartial juror on the case.
“From my personal perspective, they have nothing on him so far,” he said of Mr. Trump. “And nothing will happen to him. He’s not going to jail. Things are going to fall apart and that’s what I hope.”
Just as Mr. Estrada said his experience with a left-wing dictatorship has colored his hopes that Mr. Trump will not be found guilty, Viviana Dominguez, 63, referred to her own experience in her native Argentina, which was ruled by a right-wing military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, while expressing her distaste for Mr. Trump.
Ms. Dominguez, an art conservator who has lived in Miami for 13 years, called Mr. Trump “a disgrace,” adding, “I think he’s going to jail, but I don’t know if that’s wishful thinking.”
She described the documents case and Mr Trump’s still considerable support in terms of a disturbing easing of civic norms. “We’ve all seen that in my own country, when the lies got bigger and bigger,” she said. “The tolerance margin kept getting wider and wider, so that you never saw the limit. They would talk about morality and about family, but they would be the most corrupt, the most obscene people in the world. It’s like a state of madness.”
Roderick Clelland, a 78-year-old Vietnam veteran from West Palm Beach, the most populous city in Palm Beach County, said he was concerned about the international implications of what he saw as Trump’s lax attitude to sensitive national secrets.
“The whole world is watching us.” said Mr Clelland. “And some of those documents about other countries – are they going to trust us? People have been locked up for less. So you can’t just break the law and get away with it. So I hope there will be a penalty.”
Mr. Clelland carefully noted that he did not hate Mr. Trump. “But I don’t like his behavior and his attitude,” he said.
Despite voting for Mr. Trump twice, Ms. Starkey, the bookkeeper, said she has never been a big fan. But in both 2016 and 2020, she couldn’t bring herself to support the more liberal candidate. These days, she’s thinking about voting for Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and Republican governor of South Carolina.
Still, Ms Starkey said the charges against Mr Trump seemed like a partisan move at a time when American politics lacks much of the camaraderie between the two sides that she fondly remembers from the past. It was one of the reasons, she said, that she would have a hard time being chosen for a possible jury in the case: “Do you trust to get all the facts for and against?” she wondered.
She said she was annoyed by the drama surrounding the charges — and knew there were many more like her.
“I just want it to go away,” she said.
@Verónica Soledad Zaragovia contributed reporting from Palm Beach County, Fla.