Former US President Donald Trump waves as he boards his aircraft at Palm Beach front International Airport in West Palm Beach front, Florida, on April 3, 2023.
Chandan Khanna | Afp | Getty Pictures
Attorneys for former President Donald Trump urged a judge to deny a ask for by media outlets for cameras in a Manhattan courtroom exactly where Trump is established to be arraigned on felony charges Tuesday.
“We post that the media ask for should be denied because it will produce a circus-like environment at the arraignment, elevate exclusive security problems, and is inconsistent with President Trump’s presumption of innocence,” Trump’s attorneys claimed in their letter to Judge Juan Merchan.
The letter was manufactured public as Trump was flying from his dwelling in Florida to New York Metropolis in anticipation of his courtroom overall look.
Trump was indicted Thursday by a grand jury on costs linked to his then-lawyer’s $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels soon just before the 2016 presidential election.
He is the first U.S. previous president to deal with prison costs, a actuality that has been cited by the team of media outlets that questioned Merchan for authorization to go over Tuesday’s arraignment with even now and video clip cameras, in addition to radio recording equipment.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Place of work, which is prosecuting Trump, in its have letter to Merchan on Monday did not get a posture on whether the judge really should allow for cameras in the courtroom.
However, that letter from assistant DA Matthew Colangelo pointed out that New York state’s maximum courtroom has upheld the constitutionality of the legislation banning audiovisual coverage of most courtroom proceedings.
And Colangelo added that “even if cameras are not categorically barred,” judges have the discretion to “command the perform of judicial proceedings.”
“It would so be a defensible exercising of the Court’s discretion to exclude or limit videography, images, and radio coverage of the arraignment in the curiosity of averting opportunity prejudice to the defendant, preserving an orderly continuing, assuring the safety of the members in the proceeding, or for other reasons in just the Court’s broad authority to regulate and handle these proceedings,” the letter explained.
But Colangelo also pointed out that Merchan just lately permitted however photos to be taken in his courtroom before the commencement of proceedings in the felony prosecution of the Trump Corporation.
In that scenario, Trump’s firm was convicted of a scheme to prevent paying taxes on compensation to executives.