NEW YORK (AP) — A decide late Saturday mentioned former President Donald Trump’s attorneys cannot current authorized arguments to a jury assessing damages at a defamation trial on a jury’s conclusion final yr that he didn’t rape a columnist within the mid-Nineteen Nineties.
U.S. District Choose Lewis A. Kaplan made the dedication in an order upfront of a Jan. 16 trial to find out defamation damages in opposition to Trump after a jury concluded Trump sexually abused columnist E. Jean Carroll however didn’t discover proof was ample to conclude that he raped her.
Trump, talking in Iowa on Saturday because the Republican frontrunning presidential candidate upfront of a Jan. 15 major, criticized the decide as a “radical Democrat” and mocked E. Jean Carroll for not screaming when she was attacked. “It was all made up,” he mentioned.
Carroll, 80, gained a $5 million award final Might from a jury that concluded Trump sexually abused her in 1996 in a luxurious division retailer dressing room and defamed her in 2022.
Trump didn’t attend the Manhattan trial the place Carroll testified that an opportunity encounter at a Bergdorf Goodman retailer throughout the road from Trump Tower was flirtatious and enjoyable till he slammed her in opposition to a wall in a dressing room and attacked her sexually. Trump has vehemently denied it.
On this month’s trial, a jury will think about whether or not damages ought to be levied in opposition to Trump for remarks he made after last year’s verdict and in 2019 whereas he was president after Carroll spoke publicly for the primary time about her mid-Nineteen Nineties claims in a memoir.
Carroll’s attorneys had requested the decide to problem the order, saying that Trump’s attorneys shouldn’t be allowed to confuse jurors this month about final yr’s verdict by attempting to argue that the jury disbelieved Carroll’s rape declare.
They mentioned the jury’s discovering mirrored its conclusion that Trump had forcibly and with out consent digitally penetrated Carroll’s vagina, which doesn’t represent rape below New York state legislation however which constitutes rape in different jurisdictions.
Carroll’s attorneys mentioned the “sting of the defamation was Mr. Trump’s assertions that Ms. Carroll’s cost of sexual abuse was a wholly untruthful fabrication and one made up for improper and even nefarious causes.”
A lawyer for Trump didn’t instantly return a message Saturday.
Carroll is searching for $10 million in compensatory damages and considerably extra in unspecified punitive damages on the trial. She’s going to testify and Trump is listed as a witness. The trial is anticipated to final a few week.
In the meantime, Trump has pleaded not responsible to criminal charges in four indictments, two of which accuse him of searching for to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election, in addition to a labeled paperwork case and fees that he helped organize a payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels to silence her earlier than the 2016 presidential election.
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