- Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman ruled against video, photo access inside federal courthouse for Donald Trump’s historic arraignment on criminal charges.
- News organizations sought to record the event because of public interest ‘beyond exaggeration.’
Video and photographic images of Donald Trump at his landmark arraignment on federal criminal charges will be much more sparse than from his New York arraignment on local charges, under a federal magistrate’s ruling Monday.
News reporters captured Trump in hallway video in the Manhattan courthouse in April. Still photographers snapped his picture at the defense table, flanked by lawyers, before he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
But federal Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman ruled against news organizations that sought to record in video and pictures the historic event of the first former president facing federal charges. Goodman cited a rule prohibiting “all forms” of “photographing, audio- or video-recording, broadcasting or televising within the environs of any place of holding court in the District, including courtrooms, chambers, adjacent rooms, hallways, doorways, stairways, elevators or offices of supporting personnel, whether the Court is in session or at recess[.]”
“That is a broad prohibition,” Goodman ruled. “Moreover, allowing photographs would undermine the massive security arrangements put in place.”
The ruling came despite enormous public interest in the case. News organizations staked out Trump’s plane for the flight Monday from New Jersey to Florida, with plans to televise his motorcade from Trump National Doral golf resort to the courthouse.
“The American public’s interest in this case is beyond exaggeration,” the media companies argued.
The organizations cited one of Goodman’s peers, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, when he unsealed documents related to the FBI search for documents at Mar-a-Lago earlier in the investigation. Reinhart said the case represents issues of an “unprecedented” and “intense public and historical interest,” according to the news organizations.
Goodman said the hearing will be public, with reporters and ordinary citizens permitted to attend on a first-come, first-served basis, with a live video feed for people in a spillover room if the courtroom fills up.
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But once the action moves inside the courthouse, the recording lights go out.
Goodman said his ruling applied only to Tuesday’s hearing and that news organizations could make their argument again for future hearings before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was assigned the case.
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