Jury selection in Donald Trump’s hush money trial entered a pivotal phase as the former president returned to court on Thursday.

Lawyers still need to pick 11 more jurors to serve on the panel that will decide the first-ever criminal case against a former US president.

Seven jurors were seated on Tuesday after being grilled for hours by lawyers on everything from their hobbies to social media posts to their opinion of the presumptive GOP nominee in this year’s closely contested presidential race.

Those selected on Tuesday include an information technology worker, an English teacher, an oncology nurse, a sales professional, a software engineer and two lawyers.

The first day of Mr Trump’s trial ended on Monday with no one picked to sit on the jury or as one of six alternates.

Dozens of prospective jurors were dismissed both days after saying they could not be impartial or had other commitments that would conflict with the trial, which is expected to last several weeks.

Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged scheme to bury stories he feared could damage his 2016 campaign.

The allegations focus on payoffs to two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Mr Trump years earlier, as well as to a Mr Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged Mr Trump had out of wedlock.

Mr Trump says none of these supposed sexual encounters occurred.

The case is the first of Mr Trump’s four indictments to reach trial.

The seating of the Manhattan jury will be a seminal moment in the case, setting the stage for a trial that will place the former president’s legal jeopardy at the heart of the campaign against Democrat Joe Biden and feature potentially unflattering testimony about Mr Trump’s private life in the years before he became president.

The process of picking a jury is a critical phase of any criminal trial but especially so when the defendant is a former president and the presumptive Republican nominee.