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Media argued that the long-standing rule against cameras in federal criminal trials, which dates to the 1940s, is outdated and would violate the First Amendment if strictly enforced in the Trump case.
I’m a little confused. Don’t we want this to be as transparent as possible to limit conspiracies?
There’s transparency and then there’s theater.
Before CSPAN started televising Congress, members were able to make deals and pass laws. Being on TV let the GOP extremists force the Party to the Right.
If you watch their hearings and assemblies a lot of Congress appears to be focused on trying to get sound bytes and Tik Tok clips out of what they say. The clips just seem so weird and forced when seen in context of what the topic of discussion is.
We didn’t elect people to be actors on the clock, please make law and talk to the press later.
Newt Gingrich was the first to weaponize it. He’d make long speeches to an empty chamber, because he knew that someone was watching. Backroom deals and horse trading may seem undemocratic, but you can’t get compromise when people are forced to stand by every word.
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There will be full court transcripts.
There’s going to be conspiracies no matter what. That’s the sort of people we’re dealing with here.
Televising a trial is always an additional risk of compromising the integrity of the court. Imagine, for example, if the camera operator captures a juror’s face by accident. It’s better to eliminate everything that could conceivably risk an appeal, and circus is definitely something I’m willing to give up if it means a rock solid conviction.