Fox host Jesse Watters whitewashed and cheered on Clay Travis’ likely criminal efforts to encourage a “stealth juror” to get on Trump’s hush money case.
Yesterday, Clay Travis repeatedly called for a Trump supporter in the New York hush money case to become a MAGA stealth juror, i.e. lie under oath about his or her impartiality in order to get seated on the jury, then refuse to convict no matter what.
As the first day of jury selection in the Trump’s New York criminal case got underway yesterday, Travis tweeted: “If you’re a Trump supporter in New York City who is a part of the jury pool, do everything you can to get seated on the jury and then refuse to convict as a matter of principle, dooming the case via hung jury. It’s the most patriotic thing you could possibly do.”
According to Rep. Eric Swalwell, a lawyer, Travis committed a felony. I am pretty sure any juror who went along with Travis’ proposal would be committing the crime of perjury, too.
Travis committed the same alleged crime twice on Fox
Media Matters caught Travis repeating his MAGA plot on the radio show he cohosts with Buck Sexton, while it was streaming live on Fox Nation:
TRAVIS: We have a large listenership in the New York City area. WOR, we love you guys. If you are fortunate enough to be in this jury pool, I want you — and you listen to this show — I want you to go and do everything you can to get on this jury. … I want a Trump-voting patriot to get on this jury, recognize this for what it is, a sham political prosecution targeted against Donald Trump because he is running for president, and I want you to refuse to convict. I want jury nullification. If I were in New York City and I were on this jury group, I would do everything that I could to get seated on this jury, and I would refuse to convict. Only takes one person. We're not going to get an acquittal. There's not — there's too many anti-Trump people.
Travis should have been booted from Fox. Instead, he got a friendly hit on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime show.
Watters began by suggesting that opposition to Travis’ assault on our justice system was mere liberal oversensitivity: “Well, Clay Travis lit up the left today. All it took was one tweet,” he sneered in his introduction. That tweet was then displayed in a full-screen graphic as Watters read it. Just in case any viewers hadn’t already gotten the message.
Watters opened the interview with a smirky, “Clay, you weren’t suggesting that there’s a stealth juror that maybe is dishonest during jury selection and totally boots this trial on purpose. Would you be suggesting something like that?”
Then Watters gave Travis a generous platform to do exactly that, only more in depth and without any pushback.
Travis doubled down on his efforts to sabotage the legal process
TRAVIS: So, Jesse, of course I would say, legally, I want everyone to behave in the absolute perfect fashion. But based on the indictment that we have seen, that you have read, that we have all been talking about for a year now, this is a bogus case. Alvin Bragg should be ashamed of himself for bringing this case, for trying to, pardon a pun, trump up 34 felonies associated with it, and to use a rigged jury pool like he has in New York City to try to curry favor with a 12-person jury.
Travis, who is, apparently, a lawyer, went on to all but declare that his opinion counts for more than our legal system.
TRAVIS: I think Trump, based on all the evidence that I have seen, is innocent of these crimes because one, I think Alvin Bragg, typically, he takes every case that is a felony and drops it to a misdemeanor, right? He does that in over half the cases that he gets. In this case, he's taking a misdemeanor that I believe is outside the statute of limitations, and he is elevating it to a felony based on what I believe is legally insufficient means, trying to use another crime to justify elevating this to a felony. So, what I would encourage everybody to do is look at all the facts of this case, the facts that are already out there.
Now maybe, Jesse, there's some massive smoking gun that has not been revealed yet. That could change my impression so far. But based on everything that I have seen, Trump is innocent. I do not believe that he is likely to get a fair jury in New York City based on voting records.
And by the way, I would encourage - if you're going to strike anybody from the jury pool, anybody wearing a mask should be gone immediately because they ain't gonna be Trump fans, like as a general rule.
Watters laughed heartily.
Travis explicitly stated that subverting the law is to “apply” it
TRAVIS: We're not gonna get to, I think, to find Trump not guilty, but you might be able to find one or two who will actually apply the law here and say, I'm not going to try to get a, I'm not gonna give a guilty verdict.
Jesse Watters does his part by “merely” hinting at jury tampering
Watters broke in. Rather than challenge Travis, Watters legitimized the assault on our legal system by pretending Travis was not doing what he so very obviously was doing. Then Watters restated the proposition so that it was more of an insinuation. Even as Travis continued to dictate instructions to prospective jurors.
WATTERS: Right. So, you're not encouraging this, but you wouldn't be surprised if you saw this happening, considering the fact that they've been planning prosecutors, they've been colluding with prosecutors, and everything they've done so far has been completely unprecedented and unfair.
You wouldn't be surprised if there were stealth jurors who maybe went in there –
TRAVIS: This is a political hit job, right? Everybody on the planet understands this is a political hit job. So, the idea that you're gonna find jurors anywhere who have made absolutely no preconditions and haven't analyzed this, they've done everything they can to try to get Trump. I think they're gonna fail in D.C., time-wise, and south Florida. We know that Fani Willis, your buddy, is a disaster in Atlanta.
They only have this left with Alvin Bragg and it's the weakest of all the cases. It is bogus. It is illegitimate. And that is both from a legal perspective and just a rational reasonable man or woman standard. And so I hope that Trump gets a jury that is willing to actually look at all this and and realize that this is unprecedented in 240+ years. If we want to have a jury, Jesse, I'd rather have a jury of 150 million voters than 12 people in New York City trying to judge Donald Trump. Let's let 150 million people judge, not 12. This is a sham everybody knows it.
At that point, Watters closed the interview by explicitly endorsing Travis’ scheme: “Well said and everybody go watch Runaway Jury with John Cusack tonight."
In addition to his radio livestream on Fox Nation, Travis hosts a show on Fox Sports Radio and a sports gambling show on Fox Sports 1.
You can watch a prime time assault on our legal system below, from the April 15, 2024 Jesse Watters Primetime.
He tried to make a name for himself in 2017 by going on Brooke Baldwin’s CNN show and exclaiming that he believed in “the First Amendment and boobs”. When Baldwin realized what Travis was trying to do on her show, she immediately removed him and CNN made clear that he would not be permitted on their airwaves ever again.
Travis and Sexton are working hard to try to collectively be the next Rush Limbaugh in the Angry Right Wing AM radio circuit. It’s unknown how they’re doing in any concrete way, as the AM radioverse is now replete with Limbaugh copycats, each trying to be more offensive than the last.
In the current matter, Travis’ open advocacy for someone to try to derail the first criminal trial for Little Trump should be taken seriously. He’s not joking about this. He wants a juror to lie to the judge so he can rupture the trial and thus prevent justice from happening, which would then allow Travis and Sexton to gloat about Little Trump getting away with yet another crime at the expense of the “libtards” that Travis so openly hates.
Given Travis’ comments and his lack of remorse, one would think that there should be some consequences here. One obvious consequence would be to take Travis off the air and fine him. Another would be to subpoena him before Judge Merchan and have him held in contempt of court and placed in custody for a month. Or both could be done. But it isn’t acceptable for Travis to openly try to undermine a prosecution without paying a price for it.
