The trial of Donald Trump on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election will be one of the most consequential in American history, and it needs to be televised.
Antiquated policies governing federal courts now prevent this. Audio recordings aren’t even allowed inside the courtrooms, much less TV cameras or streaming feeds. But the Supreme Court, or Congress, has the power to carve out an exemption to allow live coverage of the former president’s trial, and they should act on it – for the sake of public transparency and for the sake of history.
Lawmakers have tried for decades to get cameras into federal courtrooms to give them the same access as courts in virtually every state in the country. Republicans and Democrats in Washington can’t agree on much these days, but a bipartisan group of senators took the latest stab this March, with Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa saying the long-stalled step would be “a victory for transparency.”
The bill, which would give federal judges the discretion to open trials to cameras, is called the Sunshine in the Courtroom Act, a nod to the famous quotation from former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis saying that “sunshine is said to be the best disinfectant.”
The proposal still hasn’t gone anywhere, nor has a companion bill to open up the arguments at the Supreme Court to public viewing. (At present, the Supreme Court only puts out audio recordings some hours after its oral arguments.)
Why aren’t federal trials televised?
The knock on televised trials from the policy’s defenders has traditionally been that they are somehow unseemly and threaten to make a mockery of the austere legal process, encouraging grandstanding by lawyers or witnesses.
The oft-cited example is the televised murder trial of O.J. Simpson in a California state court in Los Angeles in 1994-95. It featured the sight of the former NFL star trying on an ill-fitting glove and his lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, declaring that “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” One can almost imagine Trump and his lawyers, at a trial on the pending election charges, wheeling out a cart of “fake” ballots and declaring that “if the vote doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
Make America great again?If Trump cares about America and its greatness, he must leave politics. Permanently.
But the grandstanding argument falls flat against the public’s legitimate interest in seeing firsthand the workings of high-profile trials, with many of the most important issues of the day heard inside federal courtrooms.
The filming of all federal trials is long overdue, but if any single case deserved to break through the blackout, it would be the election case against Trump.
The Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, was televised
Even more than the first federal indictment against him – over Trump’s handling of classified material – the latest case against him on election interference hinges on bedrock democratic principles about free elections and the peaceful transition of power in the White House.
History will remember the case against Trump as a critical test of American democracy, and denying the public the ability to see firsthand how the saga unfolds – with possible testimony from former Vice President Mike Pence, former Attorney General William Barr and perhaps even Trump himself – would be a miscarriage of justice.
The public deserves better, especially considering the torrent of falsehoods we can expect from Trump about the case as he seeks to regain the presidency.
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Trump, who spent the weekend attacking special counsel Jack Smith, Pence and others in volatile, personal terms on his Truth Social media site, will no doubt seek to continue fanning the flames of the supposed “witch hunt” against him with long-debunked misinformation about what really happened after the 2020 election.
His most hardcore supporters might not believe anything coming out of a trial, even one that is televised or livestreamed in front of them, but others can judge for themselves how the justice system fares in handling a case of this magnitude.
If Trump wants to try to make the case yet again that he really won the 2020 election, the public can bear witness.
The country watched on TV and livestreams, transfixed, on Jan. 6, 2021, as pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president. That would-be revolution was televised; the legal consequences of it for Trump should be as well.
Eric Lichtblau is an author and investigative reporter in Washington who has won two Pulitzer Prizes in journalism in writing about national security and law enforcement affairs.
