Behind the scenes of Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York

It’s the criminal case that has captured the world’s attention – except it’s not being televised. So what is the trial of Donald Trump really like? Here is the inside story.

Donald Trump has complained a lot during the first fortnight of his criminal trial.

He’s complained about the judge, the prosecutors, the witnesses and the jurors, often controversially and possibly illegally. But the former president has one grievance in common with everyone on the 15th floor of the Manhattan Criminal Court – it is freezing up there.

And if ever he needed a reminder of his status as a defendant, the first president in history to be in such a position, it came when his lawyer asked if the temperature could be turned up.

“There’s no question it is cold,” Judge Juan Merchan replied, “but I’d rather be a little cold than sweaty, and really those are the choices.”

Photographers are given barely a minute each morning to take photos in the courtroom. Picture: Curtis Means/AFP

Trump unsuccessfully tried every trick in the book to prevent this trial, held in a courthouse so old that even a slight tweak to the thermostat sends the mercury soaring. So instead of campaigning to return to the Oval Office – where he could press a button for a Diet Coke – Trump must shiver through weeks of being called a philanderer, a fraudster and a criminal.

He seems alternately infuriated and exhausted to have to silently sit through this. Sometimes he glares at the prosecutors or shakes his head, although he is far less demonstrative than in other court appearances, perhaps conscious of the dozen New Yorkers in the jury box.

Last week, as they were being selected, Trump took a call on his iPhone in the court, only to be told off by his lawyers. Starved of distractions, he later appeared to doze off to sleep.

Trump’s aides denied the reports of journalists in the courtroom and watching from an overflow room down the corridor. The story gained little traction – painfully so for President Joe Biden, Trump’s opponent who is routinely criticised for showing his 81 years – perhaps because the case is not being televised.

Some three decades after the trial of the century, the murder case against OJ Simpson that was watched live by millions of Americans, the best the New York system can do is publish transcripts 24 hours after each day of the proceedings.

Dozens of TV crews are gathered outside the Manhattan Criminal Court. Picture: Timothy Clary/AFP

It is one of many oddities about the trial of Trump, in which he is facing 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment on the eve of the 2016 election to a porn star who claimed to have had a brief affair with him.

Each morning, a New York police truck pulls in front of the courthouse’s side door, blocking cameras capturing Trump’s arrival. Up on the 15th floor, anyone with the misfortune of using the bathroom when he steps out of the lift is locked in until he enters the courtroom.

A police truck parks outside the courthouse, blocking photographers attempting to capture Trump’s arrival. Picture: Charly Triballeau/AFP

Sometimes, he marches inside with merely a wave, while on other occasions, he stops behind a metal barricade and between armed court officers to address reporters at length.

“I’d love to talk to you people,” Trump said without a hint of irony earlier this week.

“I’d love to say everything that’s on my mind. But I’m restricted because I have a gag order.”

His relative silence inside the court does not stop him being the centre of attention. Some reporters even bring binoculars to the overflow room to zoom in on his face on the big screen.

Binoculars are allowed; cameras are not. One journalist was booted out when she took a picture of her colleague. Another was cautioned for eating a snack – food is also banned. Beanies too, despite the aforementioned temperature.

Trump occasionally speaks to reporters in a corridor outside the courtroom. Picture: Brendan McDermid/AFP

The media pack is similarly large outside, with dozens of TV cameras stationed in front of the courthouse’s scaffold-covered entrance. On the first Monday of the trial, they were joined by a similar number of Trump’s supporters, waving flags and chanting his name.

But their numbers soon thinned, and so as the former president prepared to drive downtown from Trump Tower on the second Monday, he took to his social media platform to call for “America Loving Protesters” to “GO OUT AND PEACEFULLY PROTEST”.

The next afternoon, Trump vented that “thousands of people were turned away” from what he called “an armed camp”. In truth, none of them ever arrived.

Originally published as Behind the scenes of Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York