Donald Trump's Georgia election fraud trial to be livestreamed and televised

A judge in Georgia has decided that Donald Trump’s trial on election fraud charges will be shown live on TV and online. Judge Scott McAfee announced that all the court hearings will be broadcast on Fulton County Court’s YouTube channel. A specific trial date hasn’t been set yet, but it might happen next year, possibly while Mr. Trump is running for re-election. Mr. Trump, along with 18 others, is facing charges related to a plot to change the outcome of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. The former Republican president, who is also dealing with three other legal cases, has pleaded not guilty to the 13 charges in Georgia. Normally, all court proceedings in Fulton County are shown live online. However, this will be the only one of Mr. Trump’s four trials to be televised and is expected to be one of the most-watched trials in recent times. Mr. Trump recently went to Atlanta, where he turned himself in at Fulton County Jail and had his photo taken. He has chosen not to attend his arraignment, a brief hearing where the plea is officially entered in court, which is scheduled for next Wednesday. Prosecutors claim that Mr. Trump pressured Georgia officials to change the election results in the state, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. A crucial piece of evidence in their case is a recorded phone call in which he asked the state’s secretary of state to “recalculate” the vote count. In the call, he can be heard saying, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” Mr. Trump insists the call was “perfect,” and his lawyers on the call did not express any concerns. Despite these legal challenges, Mr. Trump remains the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and his popularity among his supporters has not waned. He has described the Georgia case and the other three criminal cases against him as politically motivated. Some of his co-defendants in the Georgia case, including his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, have also decided not to appear at the upcoming court hearing. This decision is typically not controversial, according to Clark Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University. He explained that the main purpose of the arraignment is to inform the accused of the charges and enter their plea, which Mr. Trump is already aware of. Among the charges facing Mr. Trump and his co-defendants is racketeering, commonly referred to as the Rico Act, which is used to connect those who committed crimes with those who organized or ordered them, both at the state and federal levels.