Judiciary Won’t Revise Courtroom Camera Ban Before Trump Trial

The federal judiciary will appoint a panel of judges and attorneys to consider allowing cameras in the courtroom for criminal cases, delaying any decision on the issue until well after former President Donald Trump’s upcoming trial.

Judge James C. Dever III of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Northern Carolina, who chairs the Judicial Conference’s advisory committee on criminal rules, said at a Thursday meeting that a subcommittee would be created to consider revising the current ban on broadcasting criminal cases.

The announced panel follows calls for the court system to alter the prohibition in light of Trump’s trial next year in Washington on federal election obstruction charges.

But the committee’s decision to start its inquiry is unlikely to satisfy those requests: under the current system for changing rules, any proposal from the subcommittee wouldn’t take effect in December 2026 at the earliest, and likely even later — far too late for Trump’s March 4 trial to be televised, committee members said.

Dever said Thursday that the multiple layers of review required for the committee to change court rules is “a feature, not a bug” of the law governing court procedures.

“We will continue to do as we do in considering any proposal: to be thoughtful and deliberate and make sure, initially, is there a problem, and if there is, what might a solution be, and explore those issues in the time that it takes us to be thoughtful and deliberate about it,” Dever said.

The panel will be led by Senior Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr. of the US District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, and include Senior Judge Timothy Burgess of the US District Court for the District of Alaska, US Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey of the US District Court for the District of Columbia and other attorneys, Dever said.

The committee members, which includes judges, attorneys and law professors, were responding to a letter sent earlier this year by more than three dozen House Democrats asking the court system’s policy-making arm to permit Trump’s criminal trial to be broadcast.

In their August letter, the lawmakers cited the upcoming trial’s “extraordinary national importance to our democratic institutions and the need for transparency.”

In addition to the charges in Washington, Trump is also facing federal criminal charges in Florida as well as state charges in New York and Georgia.

“Given the historic nature of the charges brought forth in these cases, it is hard to imagine a more powerful circumstance for televised proceedings,” the Democrats wrote.

Major media organizations, including C-SPAN and the New York Times, have also asked the federal judge overseeing Trump’s case for permission to broadcast the proceedings. Bloomberg Law is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which signed the letter.

In a September memo to committee members, two law professors on the panel said the committee “has no authority” to waive the prohibition on broadcasting a criminal trial for the former president criminal case, set for trial in a Washington courtroom in March.

And even if the rules were formally amended to allow Trump’s trial to be broadcast, that process would take at least three years, but more realistically four or more given that the issue “generated considerable controversy,” the memo says. Any proposed rule change would come only after various layers of review by multiple Judicial Conference panels and by the public before it would even be sent to the Supreme Court, according to the memo, which was included in an agenda provided ahead of the meeting.

The committee is scheduled to meet next in Washington on April 18.