On Thursday, former President Donald Trump testified in the defamation case brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll, but only briefly.
Leaving the courtroom, he told reporters “it’s not America, this is not America.”
His testimony was preceded by a long exchange between defense attorney Alina Habba and U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, who wanted to know what President Trump would be saying on the witness stand.
The judge emphasized that President Trump is not allowed to relitigate whether he sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll, because that matter was already settled by a jury trial last year.
During the exchange, President Trump spoke up, and the judge admonished him, saying “Mr. Trump, you are disrupting these proceedings by talking loudly and that is not permitted.”
Ms. Habba said she was glad that clips from President Trump’s testimony were played earlier, with his assertions that he did not know Ms. Carroll and that she was not his “type,” because he would not be allowed to testify on that point.
Before President Trump testified, Judge Kaplan told his attorney, “Ms. Habba, I will decide what he has a right to do. That is my job, not yours.”
Ms. Habba was also asked to guarantee that she would ask President Trump whether he intended to incite people to harm Ms. Carroll with his statements.
It was a short testimony. President Trump answered “No, I just wanted to defend myself, my family …” and intended to continue with an elaboration on his answer, but the judge struck from the record everything after the word “no.”
The testimony had been delayed several times. The trial was initially supposed to span the week of Jan. 15, but President Trump was set to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral toward the end of the week and would not have been able to testify then.
The trial concluded for the day after the former president’s testimony, and will resume on Friday, Jan. 26, with closing arguments.
Previously Delayed
Then he arrived in court on Monday, Jan. 22, expecting to testify, only to learn the jury was sent home because of health concerns and the need for a COVID test. Tuesday marked the New Hampshire primary, and his attorneys requested the trial be delayed another day, and the judge later scheduled it to resume on Thursday.
In a Thursday morning post on Truth Social, President Trump questioned whether he would be able to show a CNN interview with Ms. Carroll in court.
“Are we going to be able to show the CNN Anderson Cooper tape today which, among other things, totally exonerates me from a decades old False Accusation?” he wrote, referring to clips of the interview with Ms. Carroll that he has been sharing on social media throughout the trial. “This is a witch hunt conceived and funded by political operatives for purposes of election interference!!!”
President Trump has maintained that he has done nothing wrong, and argued both in and out of court that these several cases against him—many which have culminated in trials coinciding with his 2024 campaign—are “election interference” on the part of his political opponent.
Several attempts to delay the defamation trial on the part of defense attorneys had been rejected by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan.
Other Testimonies
Video of President Trump being deposed in 2022 was played in court, where the former president denies knowing who Ms. Carroll is, and calls her crazy. He testified that he was the victim of a hoax and looked forward to suing Ms. Carroll and the attorney handling the deposition.
President Trump said he shakes many hands, referring to a photograph taken of him, Ms. Carroll, and her husband. in a photo line in New York, and did not remember the couple.
Roberta Myers, a former Elle editor, was the first to take the witness stand. She confirmed she is a Democrat and voted as such in both the 2016 and 2020 general elections. Ms. Myers testified about her relationship with Ms. Carroll, who wrote an advice column for the magazine that Ms. Myers said was so popular other publications emulated it.
Defense attorney Alina Habba asked the judge for a directed verdict in their favor after the plaintiff’s side rested their case, arguing that Ms. Carroll failed to prove her case. The judge did not grant one.
Next, Francis Carol Martin, a retired journalist and friend of Ms. Carroll’s for 33 years, took the witness stand.
Ms. Habba read several texts Ms. Martin had sent during the period Ms. Carroll had filed her lawsuits against President Trump, painting a picture of the plaintiff as someone who enjoyed the attention and sought out this spotlight.
Ms. Martin had sent multiple text about Ms. Carroll, including one where she likened Ms. Carroll to a drug addict, where the drug was “herself.”
Ms. Habba also tried to ask Ms. Martin whether Ms. Carroll had been reprimanded for inappropriate behavior toward Roger Ailes, as both journalists had worked under Mr. Ailes, but plaintiffs objected.
Case Background
This is one of two cases brought against President Trump by Ms. Carroll, dealing with accusations she made in 2019 and his response.
While President Trump was still in office, Ms. Carroll accused him of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room sometime in the 1990s. He publicly denied the accusation in a statement and interview responses, while also claiming he did not know who she was and suggested she was trying to gain publicity to sell her book.
Ms. Carroll sued President Trump for defamation in 2019 based on those statements. President Trump countersued, but the suit was denied.
The countersuit later became rationale for an appeals court to deny a dismissal of the case based on presidential immunity, with the plaintiff arguing he waived this immunity when he litigated the case.
In 2019, New York also passed the Adult Survivor Act, which would allow sexual abuse cases to be brought outside of the statute of limitations for a new period of one year. It was signed into law in 2022, and Ms. Carroll then sued President Trump in a second case accusing him of rape and defamation in new statements he had made about her.
In May 2023, a jury awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million on this second case, finding that President Trump was liable for defamation and sexual battery instead of rape. Ms. Carroll then amended her first case to seek $10 million in damages based on the formula used in the first case to arrive at $5 million.
Judge Kaplan, presiding over both cases, then issued a summary judgment finding President Trump liable for defamation in the first case, stating that the facts were the same in both cases.
President Trump has said he will appeal the rulings in both cases.
From The Epoch Times
