Trump Lawyers Warn Against Media ‘Circus’ As Chief Carnival Barker Boards Plane For New York

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(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

If there’s one thing Donald Trump can’t abide, it’s a media spectacle. Lawyers for the former president, who famously announced his candidacy as he descended a golden escalator, have rebuffed public requests for cameras in the courtroom for tomorrow’s arraignment.

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“We submit that the media request should be denied because it will create a circus-like atmosphere at the arraignment, raise unique security concerns, and is inconsistent with President Trump’s presumption of innocence,” they wrote to New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, according to CNN.

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The cameras are for later tomorrow night, when Trump gives a planned speech at Mar-a-Lago. Because he hates a circus!

Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers have blanketed the airwaves with denunciations of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, although mostly in less vitriolic terms than Trump, who referred to the prosecutor as a “Soros backed animal.” He also shit-talked the judge, just for good measure.

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Trump, who once urged cops “don’t be too nice” to suspects, will be spared the ignominy of a handcuffed perp walk. This was not an accommodation offered to countless suspects paraded before the cameras by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Nor were most of those arrestees able to keep their mugshots out of the public record. But, as other outlets have pointed out, we won’t see Trump’s booking photos tomorrow unless he himself publishes them.

New York’s Freedom of Information law was amended in 2022, to classify it as an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” to disclose any “law enforcement arrest or booking photographs of an individual, unless public release of such photographs will serve a specific law enforcement purpose and disclosure is not precluded by any state or federal laws.”

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Similarly, federal access to mugshots was also restricted in 2016. But the state of Georgia still treats them as public records. Apropos of nothing in particular.

But Trump’s attorney Alina Habba has no need to refer to “laws.” As she told CNN’s Don Lemon this morning, Trump’s mugshot should remain under wraps because he’s running for president, and anyway we all know what he looks like.

"He's the most recognized face in the world, let alone the country, right now."

Trump attorney Alina Habba argues that the former president should not need to take a mugshot and talks about his upcoming arraignment.https://t.co/Xuek8zYt5L pic.twitter.com/oaRqQolJOn

— CNN (@CNN) April 3, 2023

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“Mugshots are for people so that you recognize who they are. He is the most recognized face in the world, let alone the country right now, so there’s no need for that. There’s no need for the theatrics,” she huffed, apparently unaware of the irony of tut-tutting about “theatrics” in the context of Donald Trump.

Similarly, she offered a paean to judicial transparency, seemingly oblivious that this position might come back to haunt her next month when the media inevitably requests to put cameras in the courtroom for the E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Habba’s client.

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Meanwhile, the theatrics of her co-counsel on that case, Joseph Tacopina, have apparently gone down like a lead brick in Trumpland, with other attorneys in the former president’s orbit describing him to Rolling Stone as “dumb” and a “loudmouth.” Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Trump has just replaced Tacopina as lead counsel in the Manhattan criminal case, hiring Todd Blanche, formerly of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Blanche previously represented Trump campaign advisor Paul Manafort, as well as Ukrainegate figure Igor Fruman.

With any luck, Blanche will be as successful in this case as he was for his previous Trumpworld clients.

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

Topics

Courts, Crime, Donald Trump, Mugshots