The moment New York state court officials let us out of the 15th-floor courtroom, several dozen reporters rushed for the exits.
From the stairwell window I could see a cloud of smoke in the small park across the street. Down another floor, I could see the crowd forming around him. There is an ambulance and police elsewhere. The smell of gas and burning flesh 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 set himself on fire behind police barriers on the other side of the street.
I attended the first criminal trial of an American president every day, and just feet from where dozens of reporters lined up to enter the courthouse every morning, the harrowing sight of a pile of ashes and rubble on the cement was seared into my memory, but I barely remembered the surreal scene unfolding inside.
As cops chased wind-blown neon flyers toward news cameras, a distraught cameraman cursed the scene in front of him; not because of what he saw, but because he went out to lunch and missed his shot. I asked the court’s trench-coated spokesman whether the hearing had been postponed. He smiled. “I’m going there right now,” he told me.
After passing two lines of metal detectors downstairs, the elevators back to the 15th floor, past two rows of bag checks and another set of metal detectors, we made it back to the courtroom before the former president could scramble inside and throw himself to the floor. defense table.
There we continued to witness a quiet, tired Trump hunched over, staring, and keeping his eyes closed for six to seven hours a day, three to four days a week; This was a sight that only his circle and a handful of people could see. Lawyers, court officials, journalists and members of the public were allowed inside.
He lumbers in and out of court, briefly sitting alone at the defense table before his lawyers join him and keeping his eyes closed for most of the day. Occasionally his mouth hangs open, then he suddenly wakes up and grimaces as if he’s listening more. He collapses in his chair and disappears, barely a witness to his own trial.
It takes some time and patience to get there. I line up across the street before sunrise behind several other reporters and professional line owners who earn $50 an hour to sleep in camping chairs, personal tents, and blankets for overnight shifts and are paid by larger media networks to guarantee a spot inside. After we’re allowed inside around 8:30 a.m., I find a seat on one of the rows of wooden benches in the adjacent courtroom, which has room for about 100 people, and watch the closed-circuit feed on three large TV screens off to the side.
We are joined by a motley crew of ordinary citizens, eager to witness history up close. In the public row next to us were retirees visiting their daughters for college graduation, a vacationing California attorney who couldn’t stand the courtroom, and high school students skipping class.
And then there were the returning characters. A man with backpacks made of watches said he hoped to sell his trial body language information to online betting sites. A pair of Trump-supporting Chinese women wearing US-branded hats and clothing unfurled the American flag. Carrying a suitcase with him, John McIntosh used the desks to collect the thousands of signatures he needed to get on the ballot in the U.S. Senate.
Sylvia Achee moved in and out of the line, holding a purse-sized speaker, playing husband D-Achee’s “Liars Must Go” and handing out printed lyrics sheets. In the small park on the other side of the fence, a woman blew a shofar and played CeCe Winans’ “Come Jesus Come” through a megaphone from her phone.
In the courtroom, boldface media names like CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Kaitlan Collins sat next to veteran court reporters and tired print journalists working on little sleep. During a daylong visit, I sat next to Fox News star Jeanine Pirro, who was filling a notebook with handwritten notes before going on air to diss Stormy Daniels. A few days later, the former president stood in the hallway and read one of his statements, calling the judge “an idiot.”
More than a dozen New York court officers manage the steady flow of pedestrian traffic, but it is Mr. Trump’s presence that sets the rules. We are effectively forced to shelter in place while he is on the floor, airing his grievances and barking at the small pool of reporters and cameras in a barricaded stall in the hallway, feet away from the men’s room.
When he comes in we are free and he goes back to the defense table, silent and staring at nothing, out of sight of the rest of the world except us.