It was 5.06pm Thursday.
Donald Trump, the first president in US history to face a criminal trial, was one minute from hearing the verdict in his momentous case. History, or at least the first draft, was about to be written.
The problem? The people in court reporting said history didn’t have any internet.
At 5.07, when the word “GUILTY” was first read for count one, nearly all journalists in Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom were scrambling to get the word out. Courthouse wifi didn’t work, nor did our many mifi devices, nor did phone-based hotspots. And, of course, we weren’t allowed to use our cellphones.
The overflow room down the hall had functioning internet, but the video feed was always delayed about two minutes. Somehow, some way, a few of us got frantic messages to our respective desks – my 5.07 missive said “COUNT 1: GUILTY” – before things went totally dark.
Such was a typical day covering the most atypical court proceeding Americans will probably see in their lifetime. Something momentous was about to unfold – or in the middle of unfolding – and a completely quotidian logistical snafu, like a wifi outage, imperiled coverage.
To invoke the parlance of our youth: trial logistics were most certainly not serving … court.
A day covering the Trump trial would go like this: journalists lucky enough to be from organizations with a guaranteed courtroom seat would start rolling up to 100 Centre Street at around 7am. This early arrival didn’t make sense, since on some days we weren’t let in until after 8am, for a proceeding that started around 9.30am, if not later – through one set of magnetometers downstairs, and then through another set of mags on floor 15 – but such was the official mandate. (Journalists with court system-issued IDs could get to the front of the overflow line without a reserved spot, but everyone else had to queue up early, sometimes at 3am or earlier, in the hopes of securing a much-desired overflow seat.)
As the weeks wore on, and we all became more bedraggled, many of us with reserved seats felt comfortable showing up a little later, but there was always risk. Was today the day they’d open the doors early? Would arriving at 7.50am make us stragglers unworthy of access in the eyes of the court officers and barred from getting upstairs?
Sometimes things were out of our hands completely and, it felt, arbitrarily. A few weeks into the trial, Merchan decided that pool photographers would no longer be allowed to photograph Trump before proceedings started; he then reversed course. Later on when a Trump defense witness, attorney Robert Costello, comported himself disrespectfully, Merchan ordered everyone out of the courtroom – despite the legal presumption of access to proceedings.
Covering the trial ultimately boiled down to being incredibly present, even when it seemed like absolutely nothing was going on, and neurotically attentive. In most trials, there is a way to see the defendant; it might not be a great view, but with a little effort, one can get a workable view.
Because there were so many court officers and Secret Service agents present, snagging a good seat with a clear line of sight was very difficult, and there were only a few.
Those in the courtroom and overflow had a direct view of Trump’s face from television screens showing the proceedings, but when evidence was displayed on the same screen, his face was virtually impossible to see.
When there was evidence, we squinted and stretched and did whatever we could to catch some sort of facial expression that was different than his normal scowl. By staring intently at the screen, meaning many of us were typing as best we could without looking at our computer displays, we were able to catch glimpses of atypical behavior – like when his head started to bob, indicating he was dozing off.
I compared this level of attention to my experience on a whale watching day trip off the coast of Newfoundland some years ago. You’re staring at the water for hours, hoping to see something and, when you see a shadow on the water, hope that a school of whales is about to crest, or do whatever it is that they do.
More often than not, the shadow is just that, not a life-changing brush with nature; at the end of the day, you wind up feeling lucky if you see a flash of a tail. With Trump, we were happy to catch even his seconds of snoozing or sporadic hand gestures or whispers with his lawyers.
We were also highly attuned to the movements of Trump’s family and cronies: who showed up to support their dad or friend? Where was Melania?
On the last or penultimate day of the trial, we saw one of Trump’s sons – I forget which one, they started to blend together visually – doing some sort of voice-to-text with his phone.
Being physically present, when it seemed like nothing would happen, was how we we knew there was a verdict; the reporters sitting in the courtroomwere waiting for Merchan to officially send jurors home at 4.30pm, as he had announced he would do at the turn of the hour. And then he took the bench shortly after 4.30 and read that fateful note: “We the jury have reached a verdict.”
There was also a little bit of navigating personalities at the trial. Ninety-nine per cent of the journalists present were collegial and it was an honor and a privilege working alongside them.
There was some peacocking – some of us wondered how people could say wild things on X without any blowback – but most of us were just buckling down doing our work, hoping to get through the long days. On a few occasions leaving court, I obscured my press credential so that a journalist who wasn’t all that friendly over email wouldn’t recognize me.
There were silly little things, too, that didn’t make sense.
At some point during the proceedings, we were told that we couldn’t eat on the floor, giving us the option of going to a different floor or surreptitiously scarfing food down in a bathroom.
While this sounds like a lot of complaining, the fact is that problems for access and logistical inconveniences are bad not just for the press, but every American. The public deserves access to trial proceedings involving an ex-president.
Because legislative efforts have failed in New York that would permit livestreaming of trials in this state, it’s important that the people who are able to be there, conveying information to the public, can do so without impediment. That is true for any case. But in the case of Donald Trump – one of the most historic trials in all of American history – it sometimes felt obstacles were being put in our way. That was bad news for everyone, not just the media.
