After winning the Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump, the front-runner in the Republican race for reelection, appeared in yet another New York courthouse on Tuesday to answer to a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit. This was just one example of the juxtaposition between Trump’s litigation history and his reelection campaign.
Columnist E Jean Carroll, who was once judged guilty of sexual assault by Mr. Trump in the 1990s, is suing him for libelous remarks he made about her while he was president.
He maintains he “never met, saw, or touched… and knows absolutely nothing about” the woman, but the former president, seated a few rows behind her, seemed fixed on her.
For her part, Ms. Carroll didn’t seem to give him a glance. For much the whole process, she turned to face the bench, giving Mr. Trump only a view of her back.
Mr. Trump did not address the court during his most recent appearance in a Manhattan court, which was just last week and involved a completely different issue. But there was an air of tension about his alert and restless stance.
A separate jury trial in May of last year concluded that Mr. Trump had sexually assaulted and defamed Ms. Carroll; he intends to overturn this finding on appeal. The case’s conclusions are deemed pertinent in this instance.
The purpose of this new trial is to establish whether or not Mr. Trump’s precise defamatory remarks from 2019 caused her harm, and if so, what damages he must pay her.
A lawyer for Ms. Carroll, Shawn Crowley, stated that the jury would have to decide “how much money Donald Trump should have to pay for what he’s done”.
Furthermore, she said, “How much money will it take to make him stop”?
Mr. Trump tried to deny Ms. Carroll’s claims of rape from the White House as soon as she came up with them.
In June 2019, Mr. Trump stated, “I have no idea who this woman is,” and referred to her testimony as a “total false accusation.”
Her attorneys contend that the remarks damaged her reputation and sparked a barrage of hate mail, rape threats, and death threats.
The former president had “unleashed his followers to go after” Carroll and “threaten her life,” Ms. Crowley said the court.
She said that Mr. Trump had “caused her to live every day in fear” by defaming and humiliating her client using “the world’s biggest microphone”.
Notwithstanding the fact that his previous remarks were found to be defamatory, Mr. Trump has not stopped attacking her on his Truth Social account.
The official account on Mr. Trump’s Truth Social platform posted more than twenty postings during his Tuesday morning court appearances, labeling the case as “PURE FICTION”.
Carroll did not deserve damages, according to senior counsel for Mr. Trump, Alina Habba, because her allegations of sexual assault had made her well-known.
“Evidence will show you her career has prospered and she has been thrust back into the limelight Iike she always has wanted,” said Ms Habba.
Concerns regarding QAnon
Mr. Trump shifted in his seat to assess each potential juror as they responded to the judge’s questioning, paying close attention as they entered the room one by one.
His appearance in the jury selection chamber prompted some strange queries from the court and attorneys who were trying to ascertain whether or not possible jurors could render an unbiased verdict.
They were questioned about their voting behavior in the elections of 2016 and 2020, their support for the MeToo movement, their membership in right-wing militias, and their belief in the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Two respondents expressed their conviction that the 2020 election was rigged. One of the women mentioned that she had contributed to the Biden campaign that year. Something hit them out of the water.
Owing to heightened political and media attention, the jury will not be identified. The court will securely transport the jurors from hidden locations to the courthouse, and the judge encouraged them to use fictitious names when conversing with one another.
Approximately at 15:00 local time (20:00 GMT), nine citizens of New York formally took their places in the jury box.
However, Mr. Trump departed the room prior to Judge Lewis Kaplan repeating the allegations made by his accuser.
Ms. Carroll, who is currently 80 years old, wrote about a fortuitous meeting she had with the real estate tycoon in the 1990s inside a Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman department shop in a 2019 New York magazine article.
She mentioned that the two had run into each other while out shopping. After that, it’s said that Mr. Trump jokedly requested her to model some lingerie he was buying for another woman and asked her for suggestions. However, Ms. Carroll claimed that when she was in the changing rooms, the real estate mogul attacked her, trapped her against a wall, and lunged at her.
Trump refuted the report as “totally false” right away. Additionally, he has maintained that Ms. Carroll made everything up to promote her memoir.
The May 2023 trial concluded that Mr. Trump had mistreated Ms. Carroll sexually and slandered her.
Judge Kaplan gave the jury instructions on Tuesday, informing them that Mr. Trump knew his statements from June 2019 were untrue or most likely false at the time they were made, and that they were false and defamatory.
An intense trial is coming up.
The front-runner for the Republican nomination, Ms. Carroll, did not show up for the initial civil trial. He is already liable for $5 million (£4 million) in damages for referring to her story as a “con job” and a “hoax” in 2022.
Although the trial will not go long, there could be some dramatic moments.
On Wednesday, Ms. Carroll is anticipated to testify, and on Thursday, the case is supposed to conclude. However, Lewis Kaplan, the judge, has decided that Mr. Trump can give a testimony the following Monday.
That follows a contentious disagreement between the legal teams on the former president’s admissibility to the witness stand.
In a harsh rebuke issued the previous week, the judge “Mr Trump is precluded from offering any testimony, evidence or argument suggesting or implying that he did not sexually assault Ms Carroll, that she fabricated her account of the assault or that she had any motive to do so.”
Roberta Kaplan, the lead counsel for Ms. Carroll—who is unrelated to Judge Kaplan—has predicted that Mr. Trump will try to “sow chaos” with his testimony.
“There are any number of reasons why Mr Trump might perceive a personal or political benefit from intentionally turning this trial into a circus,” she wrote in a letter to Judge Kaplan.
Ms. Habba said that the former president is “well aware” of the court’s decision and “the strict confines placed on his testimony”.