Dershowitz: American public should be able to 'see every aspect' of Trump's trial on TV

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz says former President Trump's arraignment Tuesday in the classified documents case should have been televised live, given the historic nature of the trial.

"I think that every American should have been able to see the hearing live, and they should see every aspect of the trial on television," he told Just the News, after Trump pleaded not guilty to all 37 federal criminal counts. "This is the most important case ever to be televised because the country is divided."

Dershowitz said banning cameras in the Miami courthouse for Trump's arraignment made it harder for Americans to find straight news coverage of the case – with Trump supporters arguing the former president has been unfairly targeted by the government, with the backing of the main-stream media.

"You can't get straight reporting on the case," he said. "You watch some networks and you see one case. You watch another network and it's like a completely different case. And this is the most compelling case for live coverage of television in the courtroom, so that every American can judge for themselves, whether justice is being done." 

Dershowitz explained that "it's routine to ban cameras in federal courts but there are exceptions" and that the Trump trial should have been one of them. He compared the trial to the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade last June.

"They allowed a real time oral transmission, maybe with a couple of seconds delay," he said. "The same thing should happen here with television transmission."

In March, a bipartisan group of senators including Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), reintroduced legislation to allow cameras in federal court. 

Trump has been charged with alleged mishandling classified documents related to his time in the White House, making him the first former president to face federal charges. 

Alina Habba, one of former President Trump's lawyers, described the charges as "targeted prosecution of a leading political opponent" and compared the trial to what happens under dictatorships like Cuba and Venezuela.

”It is commonplace there for rival candidates to be prosecuted, persecuted, and put into jail,” she said outside of the courthouse.