Special counsel Jack Smith opposes televising the federal election subversion trial of former President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, according to a filing late Friday.
Prosecutors wrote that federal courts are expressly prohibited from allowing proceedings in a courtroom from being broadcast or even photographed and that although the public was allowed to access some proceedings through teleconferences during the Covid-19 pandemic, the exception ended in September for criminal trials.
In a long-shot attempt, a group of media organizations, including CNN, asked the federal judge overseeing the case, Tanya Chutkan, for permission to broadcast the trial given its historic nature. In a separate petition to the judge, NBCUniversal Media argued that the long-standing rule against cameras in federal criminal trials, which dates to the 1940s, is outdated and would violate the First Amendment if strictly enforced in the Trump case.
Trump’s trials need to, to the extent possible, follow the normal rules and procedures of the courts in which they are held. These are not political prosecutions, there is sufficient evidence to support all of the indictments that Trump has been charged with, but he is still a former President. Even if the prosecution decisions are not political there is an unavoidable political element to these trials, especially in terms of media coverage and public perception, which must be zealously guarded against. I do think that the prohibition on pictures and video recording should be changed but that change should go through the normal process and apply to all proceedings going forward. To make exceptions to the usual order is to invite greater politicization and distrust of the institution.