🎪 📺

 Let me start with a long quote, and then unpack it a bit:

I would caution you against being fooled by what’s going on here. Trump does not really want cameras in the courtroom. They would expose the truth and expose him for what he truly is. He understands what happens when his testimony and the testimony of others about him is made public—he has undoubtedly read the recent New York Times/Siena poll that shows him losing in key swing states if he’s convicted in a criminal case. He saw how people had their eyes opened when the House January 6 committee proceedings were televised. Trump likes his solo appearances outside of the courtroom, but he fears the reality of the actual proceedings and the truth. 

And his lawyers know what the law currently says. As I wrote last night, it’s the position the government took: the rules firmly bar cameras in the court. It will be a heavy lift to convince the courts to reverse course, not undoable, but uphill. So now, with this filing, Trump is trying to give the public an additional reason to accept the idea that his trial shouldn’t be televised: because he wants it to be. Trump is hoping for the knee jerk reaction, we should automatically reject anything he wants. If Trump wants cameras, we should all be suspicious and concerned, right? People will say cameras would work to his advantage; he would make it a circus. 

Don’t be taken in by this effort to prevent the public from knowing what’s happening in the courtroom when Trump faces accountability at long last. Federal judges are well equipped to prevent litigants in their courtrooms, including criminal defendants, from making a mockery of the proceedings. They will be ready. And regardless of the presence of cameras inside the courtroom, Trump will continue to do whatever he’s permitted to outside of it, where cameras will, in any event, be present. Cameras inside the courtroom are the only way the public will have access to the minute by minute of the proceedings to judge for themselves. Trump wants to damage trust in the government and call this a kangaroo court—fine, let him have his way and let the sunlight into his trial. Because the facts are the facts and the evidence is the evidence. People are entitled to the truth here. 

Trump does not want them to see it, regardless of what’s in his filing. It’s meant as a strategic measure to paint himself as martyr and the government as a Soviet-style prosecution. He might even change course if it appeared the trial was going to be televised.

I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up. 

That final paragraph assumes Trump is rational, and just pretending to be stupid, demented, and disconnected from reality. But he walked out of the New York court proclaiming (like his sons), that he did a brilliant job. And he still insists Michael Cohen’s testimony ended the case in Trump’s favor.* But he doesn’t want the trial televised because he’s working a double-blind, “heads-I-win, tails-you-lose,” strategy? Yeah, right. Trump doesn’t think he’ll be “revealed.” He insists his innocence is all that is ever revealed. He thinks every one of his trials will be a vindication. And when they aren’t, he’ll be convinced he is, again, a victim of a rigged system.

If the trial were televised, he’d come out of the courtroom every day proclaiming victory, his  innocence, and either “WITCH HUNT!,” “ELECTION INTERFERENCE!,” or both. Daily. Like he’s doing in New York, and he isn’t there everyday. It’s not like he can address the cameras in the courtroom. And apart from whatever drama occurred in court that day, what do you think would play on TeeVee that night? Or go viral that day? The reporting on Trump’s testimony focused on the drama, not the data. Is that going to change because the cameras show a live trial nobody really pays attention to?

Nobody watches trials, because trials are boring. The only people really interested in the evidence and the arguments are the people paid to be interested; and even then the reporters (even those with law degrees) get it mostly wrong. Nobody watched the OJ trial. They watched the clips of Johnny Cochran, or the live feed of the closing arguments and the jury verdict (I was in a restaurant for that one. You could have heard a pin drop. But no one in that room had watched the trial day by tedious day.)

Courtrooms are like Shakespeare: they don’t belong on TeeVee.

Trump will declare the court a farce no matter what. Despite the televised hearings, carefully scripted and produced, of the J6 committee, partisans still praised it/derided it. People had access to the video (FoxNews tried to turn it into what it wasn’t), but how many actually paid attention, v. those who decided based on what they were told by the pundits they agreed with?  Televised jury trials do not make us all the 13th (7th, actually, in federal court) juror, anymore than watching a football game at home makes you the 12th man, ready to take the field if needed. And people would spend more time watching a football game than watching a criminal trial; and pay more attention, too.

Yes, the NYT/Siena poll said votes would flip if Trump were convicted. Nobody said they had to be the 7th juror before they could accept Trump was guilty and fairly tried. Knowing he was convicted would be enough for everyone except MAGA. And they haven’t shown any electoral clout since, well, ever.

The biggest problem with cameras is that Trump’s lawyers are hardly “The Dream Team.”** They suck, and are very likely to play to the cameras, trying to get in everything Trump says he wants in, but which will likely be excluded before trial. IOW, their antics will raise objections by the DOJ, and cause the judge to caution the jury and the defense, and, yes, delay the trial, by prolonging it. Nothing good comes of it, IOW.

The facts are the facts, and the evidence is the evidence, but the jury is entitled to them more than the public is. Both can be reported without TeeVee in the room, and by non-video means. After all, the purpose of this process is to determine criminal liability, not to determine a political outcome. That’s up to the people who have to trust the government (laws, courts, police, etc.); or the American experiment really is over.

*I should add, he’s going back to that same courtroom to repeat himself to the same judge, in the proposed (by pundits) theory that on direct examination he can “make his case.”

But the judge still won’t allow him to grandstand (or be impressed when he does), and Trump still won’t create the fact record that will win on appeal. If anything, he’ll prove to the appellate court that he had his chance to make his full case, and the finder-of-fact weighed it all against him. Which is the very definition of a finder-of-fact, and the very thing an appellate court can’t overrule.

Besides, Trump still wants to try the fraud case that’s already been decided, so all he’s doing is boring the judge. And potentially ruining his credibility (or that and his sons, when they testify again) by contradicting what he’s said already.

It’s literally the dumbest thing he can do, IOW. But his lawyers are not in control.

**Exhibit ‘A’:

On November 3, 2023, the United States filed an opposition to applications of a coalition of media organizations seeking to record and broadcast the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump (“the defendant”). ECF No. 16. In advance of that filing, the Government sought the defendant’s position on the applications, and his counsel requested that the Government represent to the Court that he took no position. The Government accurately reported that to the Court. Id. at n.2. On November 10, however, the defendant reversed course and filed a response in support of the applications. ECF No. 19. The defendant’s response did not engage with the relevant Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure or cite any applicable caselaw, and instead made false and incendiary claims about the administration of his criminal case, United States v. Trump, No. 23-cr-257 (TSC). The Government requests an opportunity to respond to the defendant’s claims and is prepared to file its proposed reply, which is four pages, immediately upon receiving leave from the Court.

The opening paragraph of the most recent court filing from the DOJ. Trump’s clowns couldn’t win a moot court against first-year law students.