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Will the Public Get to Watch Donald Trump on Trial? [1]
['Condé Nast', 'Charlotte Klein']
Date: 2023-08-03 14:58:56.098000+00:00
The federal charges against Donald Trump would likely result in the most-watched criminal trials of this generation. That is, if the public had the ability to actually see them.
As the first president, current or former, to be charged with criminal activity—both in Miami, where Trump faces charges on his alleged mishandling of classified documents and seeking to block investigators, and now in Washington for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election—these trials will be of immense national interest. But cameras are currently banned in federal criminal trial courts, preventing the public from witnessing what might be the most important court case in the nation’s history.
Some experts, including a former top prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel office, Andrew Weissmann, are calling for that to change. “It’s going to be incumbent on the chief justice of the United States to make this trial public. He has the power to do that,” Weissmann said of John Roberts on the latest episode of Inside the Hive. (Roberts, as chair of the Judicial Conference, the policy-setting body of the federal judiciary, can make this decision.) “Regardless of what the outcome is, whether there’s a conviction or an acquittal, it is going to be really important for the public to see that evidence so that we have faith in the system and people can evaluate the evidence,” Weissmann told host Brian Stelter.
Weissmann said he believes there is a chance Roberts acts, given “this is a unique case.” But Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a judicial reform advocacy group, is more skeptical about the possibility of a policy change. “At least not while Roberts is chief,” Roth says. “There was a lot of arm twisting to get his court to simply do live audio. I think we’re going to have to wait for a regime change for any significant changes in broadcast policy at the Supreme Court and in the lower courts.”
Former acting US solicitor general Neal Katyal also stressed the importance of camera access. “This is the people’s court and they should be able to see what it is doing,” he wrote in an email, adding that “this shouldn’t be a partisan issue—everyone benefits from increased transparency.” Even before Trump’s third indictment dropped, his own lawyer, John Lauro, was calling for cameras in the courtroom. “I would hope that the Department of Justice would join in that effort so that we can take the curtain away and all Americans can see what’s happening,” Lauro said during an appearance on Fox News, days before the DOJ handed down federal charges in the elections case.
There are, according to Katyal, “at least two pathways” to changing the camera policy. One is for the Judicial Conference to vote to amend the rules, though the group has been reluctant to do so in the past. “Indeed, the Conference has considered the idea of allowing cameras for more than 30 years and in 1994, it considered and rejected a proposal to televise criminal trials,” Katyal said. The other option is for Congress to pass a law. A bipartisan group of senators have sponsored the Sunshine in the Courtroom Act of 2023, “which would grant federal judges the discretion to allow cameras in the courtroom while protecting the identities of witnesses and jurors when necessary or upon request,” CBS News reported back in April.
Whether the Trump trials will put enough pressure on Congress to actually act remains to be seen. Without cameras, an increasingly polarized public will rely on what’s filtered through their preferred media outlets to understand what’s happening in the courtroom.
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[1] Url:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/trump-in-court-cameras
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