Five Questions with Reporter Adam Klasfeld: Insights From Inside the Trump Trial Courtroom

Adam Klasfeld is an experienced legal journalist who has provided straightforward reporting on many of the most important cases and matters of our times. Currently, he is a journalism fellow at Just Security, an online forum for the analysis of security, democracy, foreign policy, and rights issues. Just Security is a part of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law. Over the course of his career, Adam has covered then-President Donald Trump’s impeachment trials, Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking case, the federal prosecution of Michael Cohen, and Chelsea Manning’s WikiLeaks case, among many others.

We are incredibly fortunate to have him as our guest tonight, because currently, Adam is spending his 9-5 in a Manhattan courtroom, watching the first-ever trial of a former American president.

His reporting, even as it sticks to “just the facts”, helps to give us a real feel for what’s going on in the courtroom. If you aren’t already, I recommend following Adam on Twitter, where his handle is @klasfeldreports. One of my favorite tidbits this week has been this insight into the process of questioning potential jurors:

With no video or audio coming out of the courtroom, the impressions of astute observers who are in the room where it’s happening is critically important. I’ve asked Adam to dig a little deeper tonight, to give us a real feel for how this is unfolding, and to tell us how he is processing it, both as a reporter and as an American citizen.

“Five Questions With” is a special edition of Civil Discourse for paid subscribers only. It’s become my habit to do this several Friday nights every month. All of my other posts are also available to people with free subscriptions. Five Questions is my way of saying thank you to those of you who are able to support this work with paid subscriptions, which make it possible for me to devote time and resources to this work and keep it available for everyone.