For nearly every day of Donald Trump’s Manhattan hush money trial, photographers have captured a grimacing Trump seated at the defense table, a former U.S. president for the first time facing criminal charges in an American courtroom.
The judge, jurors and witnesses are not allowed to be photographed, but for most of the proceedings, pool photographers have been brought into the courtroom to photograph Trump as the day in court gets underway. They have captured his handwritten notes, such as when Trump, as closing arguments got underway, scrawled in black marker on a yellow sticky note affixed to a list of quotes about the trial, “This case should be dismissed by the judge.”
Earlier, after a pool journalist had broken a rule, the judge forbade photographs of Trump at the trial. Courtroom sketch artists, as well as a fine artist, relayed their depictions of Trump to people outside of the room during this time.
At times, Trump has approached a bank of cameras stationed outside the courtroom, where he has delivered remarks lashing out about the charges against him or read favorable commentary in his defense. Occasionally, Trump holds a tightly gripped stack of papers. Almost always, a defense attorney glowers beside him.
At other times, Trump has stridden past the cameras, holding aloft his fist or offering a thumbs up.
Photographers have captured Trump during campaign stops in the city in the early weeks of the trial. Fresh from the courtroom in the first week of the trial, Trump visited the Sanaa Convenient Store in Harlem, where a man was stabbed to death in 2022.
They have captured Trump’s antagonists: witness Stormy Daniels, whose claims of a sexual encounter with Trump are at the center of the alleged cover-up scheme that prosecutors said Trump conspired in, leaving the court after testifying against him on May 9, and Michel Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer, arriving at home after a day on the stand. In total, between April 15 and May 29, Getty Images has tagged 12,692 images with “Donald Trump New York.”
Outside, Trump’s supporters and critics have swelled the square facing the courthouse, Collect Pond Park, where, as the first week of the trial came to a close, a man lit himself on fire.
A rotating cast of surrogates and family has joined Trump at court before taking to the street outside to deliver many of the attacks Trump is barred from making.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., slammed the trial as “a sham,” echoing Trump’s characterization of the trial as a political persecution.
