Chapo, meet Jacko.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the notorious Mexican drug lord facing life in prison as the boss of the world’s most bloodthirsty cartel, came face to face Monday with his potential jurors — including a Michael Jackson impersonator.
Forty-five prospective jurors underwent questioning in Brooklyn federal court during the first day of jury selection for the long-awaited trial, with one telling lawyers that he made a living imitating the late King of Pop.
That prompted Guzman lawyer Eduardo Balarezo to quip, “Show us the moonwalk!”
The prospective juror appeared to chuckle at the remark —- but prosecutors wanted him dismissed because there aren’t a lot of Jackson impersonators in the area, which could make him easily identifiable.
Identities of the 12 selected jurors and six alternates will remain anonymous, and they will be escorted to and from the courthouse every day by armed US Marshals.
Another prospective juror looked visibly shaken as she admitted to Judge Brian Cogan that she was scared to serve on the highly publicized case.
“They’re making threats to the family of jurors,” she said of Guzman’s family.
But she quickly changed her tune and said she would be willing to serve after Cogan asked her, “If I were to tell you that’s wrong, that there has been no threats made to jurors and no threats have been made against me… could you be fair and impartial?”
The judge wound up tossing the woman after, concluding, “She’s very easily scared. I think we need jurors in this case who are not easily intimidated.”
All 100 prospective panelists filled out questionnaires that include a query about whether they’d ever heard of the infamous defendant.
“One local deli near my work has a sandwich called the ‘el Chapo.’ It’s delicious,” one man wrote.
That answer prompted defense lawyer William Purpura to ask him: “That sandwich, may I ask, does it have bologna on it?”
“It’s got cream cheese, it’s a bagel, with lox — I don’t know if you’ve ever had lox — with capers, it’s a little spicy. I don’t know why they call it the ‘el Chapo’ but it’s delicious,” he answered.
Guzman — who gets served a bologna sandwich by the feds each day for lunch — didn’t appear to find the exchange amusing and sat sullen-faced, even as defense lawyer Balarezo cracked up.
The diminutive Guzman, 61, hardly made eye contact with any of the possible jurors, who took turns sitting no more than 10 feet away from him as they underwent questioning.
The jailed boss of the infamous boss of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel — whose nickname means “Shorty” for his small stature —appeared in court in a dark-blue suit and a white dress shirt with a spread collar that was unbuttoned at the top.
His beauty queen wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, is barred from the selection process as are all members of the public to protect jurors from any potential danger.
Seventeen potential jurors were dismissed Monday, including a middle-aged man who admitted he read the Wikipedia page for Guzman and a woman in her 20s who said she couldn’t be fair after watching “Narcos.” The hit Netflix series is about the late drug lord Pablo Escobar, Guzman’s dangerous Colombian counterpart.
Guzman, who’s twice escaped maximum-security prisons in Mexico, will spend weekdays of his trial locked up in Brooklyn instead of across the East River — out of fears he could be assassinated and to avoid the traffic nightmare caused by transporting him to court each day, a high-ranking police source told The Post.
Each Monday, Guzman, who’s in solitary confinement in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, will be taken via police escort along the Brooklyn Bridge to court. He’ll return to the MCC on Fridays for the weekend, the source said.
During his transport, the bridge will be briefly closed to pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
“They talked about closing the bridge twice a day but that’s crazy. That would disrupt the whole city,” the source said.
Authorities were also concerned about “more than a breakout while moving him,” the source added. “We were worried about somebody killing him. It’s a drug war.”
Guzman was taken to court Monday in the pre-dawn hours. He had a similar police escort for pre-trial hearings.
Authorities have considered that Guzman could slip away in a style similar to Rédoine Faid, a convicted armed robber who escaped from French prison via helicopter and with the help of heavily armed gunmen in July. Faid was serving a 25-year sentence when he broke out of the lockup in Réau.
“El Chapo could try something like the escape outside Paris,” a source said.
In and around the courthouse, security was noticeably beefed up with bomb-sniffing dogs and metal detectors outside the courtroom. Only five members of the media are allowed inside during jury selection.
Guzman faces charges of funneling more than 200 tons of narcotics into the US through his lucrative cartel and employing sicarios, or hit men, to rub out witnesses and rivals.
The trial is expected to last as long as four months. Opening statements are expected Nov. 13.