‘Cowardly judge:’ Dismissed Trump hush money trial juror number 4 shares his story

Herson Cabreras said he was taken by surprise when the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York dismissed him from jury service Thursday, after he had already been empaneled.

“That surprised me, that really surprised me,” Cabreras, previously known only as Juror Number 4, said in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY. “I said, ‘Wow, something else is going on here.’ But they decided not to take me, and that’s it. What can I say? So I said, ‘Fine.'”

The kerfuffle over his jury service arose after prosecutors raised the issue of a 1991 incident in which Cabreras and an associate were accused of tearing down political campaign signs in Harrison, New York, a suburb of New York City. A majority of the signs belonged to Republicans.

But at the end of the day, “they did me a favor,” Cabreras said. Although he felt he could have been impartial, his family “was not happy with all this.”

R&I ~ MJM