Donald Trump’s lawyers have said the federal trial planned for next March in which the former president will face charges of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election should be “fully televised”.
Lawyers representing media outlets had asked Judge Tanya Chutkan to permit cameras in court for Trump’s forthcoming trial in Washington DC. Yesterday, his lawyers filed a response supporting that application. The response has more to say about politics than law.
On her Substack blog, the legal analyst Joyce Vance wrote that “Trump does not really want cameras in the courtroom… It’s meant as a strategic measure to paint himself as martyr and the government as a Soviet-style prosecution.” His lawyers expect the application to be dismissed because cameras are normally banned in federal hearings.
It will be a heavy lift to convince the courts to reverse course, not undoable, but uphill…
And Trump’s lawyers may have inadvertently provided Judge Chutkan with some cover by asking for cameras and claiming Trump’s due process rights would otherwise be violated. Federal courts have traditionally disallowed cameras out of concern for a defendant’s due process rights.
Here, Trump has effectively mooted that argument. He has waived the argument on appeal. There is no reason, other than the existence of an outmoded rule, to prevent the public from observing this most important of trials.
Like Vance, I hope the broadcasting application will be granted.