E. Jean Carroll enters Manhattan Federal Court, within the second civil trial after she accused former U.S. President Donald Trump of raping her a long time in the past, in New York City, U.S., January 18, 2024.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
The author E. Jean Carroll resumed testifying Thursday in her civil defamation trial stemming from sexual assault claims towards Donald Trump, a day after the previous president clashed with the presiding judge in open court.
Trump didn’t return to the Manhattan federal courtroom for the second day of his accuser’s testimony. Instead, he was in Palm Beach, Florida, to attend the funeral of his mother-in-law, Amalija Knavs.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan had beforehand rejected a request by Trump’s lawyer to delay the trial for every week in order that Trump may go to the funeral.
On Wednesday, Kaplan warned Trump that he could possibly be kicked out of the courtroom for making “disruptive” outbursts throughout Carroll’s testimony.
Trump, 77, shook his fingers within the air and shot again, “I might find it irresistible.”
The judge replied, “I do know you’ll. You simply cannot management your self on this circumstances, apparently.”
E. Jean Carroll testifies earlier than Judge Lewis Kaplan as former U.S. President Donald Trump watches, through the second civil trial the place Carroll accused Trump of raping her a long time in the past, at Manhattan Federal Court in New York City, U.S., January 17, 2024 on this courtroom sketch.
Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
The tense change got here after an lawyer for Carroll complained that Trump’s feedback, resembling calling the trial a “witch hunt” and a “con job,” could possibly be heard by the jurors.
Carroll, 80, had testified in Trump’s presence that he raped her in a New York City division retailer within the mid-Nineties, then defamed her after she got here ahead with the accusation in 2019, when he was president.
She testified that his lies “shattered my popularity.”
“To have the president of the United States, one of the crucial highly effective individuals on earth, calling me a liar for 3 days and saying I’m a liar 26 occasions — I counted them — it ended the world that I had been residing in,” Carroll mentioned on the witness stand.
The trial is the second to middle on Carroll’s claims of assault and defamation by Trump.
A jury final yr in a separate however carefully associated civil trial discovered Trump chargeable for sexual abuse and defamation, and ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million. Trump is interesting that verdict.
Ahead of the present trial, Kaplan dominated that Carroll defamation claims towards Trump had already been confirmed, and that the trial would focus solely on deciding the quantity owed in damages.
Carroll’s legal professionals are asking for at the very least $10 million in damages on this case.
The former president, who faces dozens of prison fees in 4 separate courts along with a number of civil instances, has turned his authorized strife right into a key characteristic of his 2024 presidential marketing campaign. He is at the moment the clear frontrunner for the GOP nomination.
After leaving court docket on Wednesday, Trump headed to New Hampshire for a marketing campaign occasion. He hopes to scrub up within the Granite State’s GOP major election subsequent week, repeating his landslide victory in Monday’s Iowa caucuses.
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