by A few dozen reporters raced for the exits as New York state court officials let us leave the 15th floor courtroom.
From the stairwell window I could see a plume of smoke in the small park across the street. Another floor down, I could see the crowd forming around him. Down another, ambulance and police. The smell of gas and burning meat then hit me as I walked through the front door.
On the fourth and final day of jury selection in Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, a man had expelled himself behind police barriers across the street.
I attended every day of the first ever criminal trial of an American president, and the horrifying image of a pile of ash and debris on cement is just steps away from where dozens of reporters line up every morning to enter the house court. into my memory, but barely remembered in the surreal drama that was going on inside.
As the police chased his neon pamphlets flying in the wind toward a phalanx of news cameras, a distraught cameraman cursed the scene before him; not because of what he had seen, but because he had gone to lunch and missed his shot. I asked the court spokesman who was wearing a trench coat if the trial had been delayed. He smiled. “I’m in charge there right now,” he told me.
After going through two lines for metal detectors downstairs, up the elevators back to the 15th floor, through two more sets of bag checks and another set of metal detectors, we filed back into the courtroom before the former president on the inside and plopped himself at the. protection table.
Then we continued to witness a tired, silent Trump, who slouches, stares and keeps his eyes closed for six to seven hours a day, three to four days a week – a sight that is not he only gave to his entourage and his. attorneys, court officials, journalists and members of the public are allowed inside.
He goes in and out of court, sits briefly alone at the defense table before his attorneys join him, then keeps his eyes closed for most of the day. His mouth falls open from time to time, before he seems to wake up and scrunch his face as if he’s listening harder. He collapses into his chair and leaves, barely a witness to his own trial.
It takes some time and patience to get there. I cross the street before sunrise behind a few other reporters and professional linemen who make $50 an hour to sleep in camp chairs, personal tents and blankets for overnight shifts, paid by larger media networks to side spot ensure inside. After we’re inside around 8.30am, I find a seat in one of the rows of wooden benches inside an adjoining courtroom with space for about 100 people, watching the closed-circuit broadcast next door on three large TV screens.
With us is a motley crew of everyday citizens who want to see history up close. In the public line next to us were retirees visiting their daughter during her college graduation, a California attorney on vacation who couldn’t resist a courtroom, and high school students skipping class.
And then the characters were returning. One man with backpacks made of clocks said he hoped to sell trial information about body language to online betting sites. A pair of Trump-supporting Chinese women in US-branded hats and clothes removed an American flag. John McIntosh, who lugged around a suitcase, used the lines to collect the thousands of signatures he needs to get on the ballot for the US Senate.
Sylvia Achee walked up and down the line carrying a handbag sized speaker playing her boyfriend D-Achee’s song “Liars Must Go” and handing out printed lyric sheets. In the small field on the other side of the fence, a woman blew a whistle and played “Come Jesus Come” by CeCe Winans from her phone and into a bullpen.
Inside the courtroom, media heavyweights — like CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Kaitlan Collins — sat alongside veteran court reporters and exhausted print journalists working on little sleep. During her one-day visit, I sat next to Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, who filled a notebook with handwritten notes before going on air to rip into Stormy Daniels. A few days later, the former president stood in the hall and read one of his statements calling the judge a “fool”.
More than a dozen New York court officials direct the steady flow of foot traffic, but Mr. Trump’s presence sets the rules. With him on the floor, unloading grievances and barking at the small pool of reporters and cameras set up in a barricaded pen in the hallway, steps away from the men’s bathroom, we are actually forced to shelter in place.
When he is inside, we are free, and he goes back to sitting at the defense table, mute and staring at nothing, out of sight of the rest of the world, except us.
