Former US President Donald Trump has filed a legal motion backing media requests for live television coverage of his federal trial on charges he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In the late Friday filing, Trump argued that prosecutors want the trial held “in darkness” as part of what he claims is a politically motivated effort by President Joe Biden’s administration to undermine his bid for re-election next year.

Trump is leading the field of Republican candidates seeking the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. Biden is expected to win the Democratic Party’s nomination to a second term.

Trump is facing four criminal proceedings, including the federal court trial set for March in which he faces charges of attempting to defraud the federal government and obstructing Congress by knowingly spreading false claims of election fraud.

His unfounded claims that the 2020 vote was rigged spurred thousands of his supporters to storm the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed bid to block congressional certification of his defeat by Biden.

In his latest filing by his lawyers, John Lauro and Todd Blanche, Trump endorsed requests by media organizations that U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan allow live television coverage of the trial.

“Every person in America, and beyond, should have the opportunity to study this case firsthand and watch as, if there is a trial, President Trump exonerates himself of these baseless and politically motivated charges,” said the filing.

It accused Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s team of violating Trump’s constitutional rights and attacked Chutkan for allowing “these attacks,” thereby “placing the interests of his political opposition” above his legal protections.

“These proceedings should be fully televised so that American public can see first hand that this case…is nothing more than a dreamt-up constitutional charade,” it said.

Smith earlier this month opposed the media requests, citing a decades-old federal court rule barring broadcasts of criminal proceedings.

Television coverage also potentially could intiminate witnesses and jurors, Smith said in a November 3 filing.

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Pope Francis has dismissed Bishop Joseph E. Strickland of Tyler, Texas, one of his fiercest critics among US Roman Catholic conservatives, a Vatican statement said on Saturday.

It is very rare for a bishop to be relieved of his duties outright. Usually bishops in trouble with the Vatican are asked to resign before submitting a resignation, which the pope accepts.

Popes make such moves, considered drastic, when a bishop refuses a request to resign. Strickland is 65, 10 years shy of the usual retirement age for bishops. Strickland had said earlier this year that he would refuse to resign if asked.

Strickland, a prolific user of social media who was named to the diocese by the late Pope Benedict in 2012, tweeted earlier this year that he rejected Pope Francis’ “program undermining the Deposit of Faith”.

He has been particularly critical of the pope’s attempt to make the Church more welcoming to the LGBT community and attempts by Francis to give lay people more responsibility in the Church and opposed a recent synod.

The dismissal followed a Vatican investigation earlier this year into the administration of the Tyler diocese, which Catholic media reports said included a review of his handling of financial affairs.

It was announced simultaneously by the Vatican and the US Bishops Conference. Neither statement gave a reason.

There was no immediate response from Strickland. A recording on the diocese’s telephone said they were closed for the weekend.

Strickland had become one of the most vocal standard bearers of the ultra-conservative wing of the US Church and has a national following far beyond the small diocese of Tyler in eastern Texas.

Last August, the pope lamented what he called a “reactionary” Catholic Church in the United States, where he said political ideology had replaced faith in some cases.

Strickland is a strong supporter of former US president Donald Trump and is seen as a hero by conservative US Catholic media outlets that are aligned with Trump.

Last year, when the Vatican defrocked ultra-conservative US. anti-abortion priest Frank Pavone for “blasphemous” social media posts and disobedience to bishops, Strickland was one of the few American bishops to defend him publicly.

“The blasphemy is that this holy priest is canceled while an evil president promotes the denial of truth and the murder of the unborn at every turn, Vatican officials promote immorality and denial of the deposit of faith and priests promote gender confusion devastating lives…evil,” Strickland wrote on the platform then known as Twitter.

The Vatican said Francis named the bishop of Austin, Texas, Joe Vasquez, as the interim administrator of the Tyler diocese.