NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump can wait per week to testify at a New York defamation trial the place he might face hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in damages after a jury concluded that he sexually abused a columnist within the Nineteen Nineties, a federal choose mentioned Sunday.
Choose Lewis A. Kaplan issued a one-page order saying Trump might testify on Jan. 22 even when the trial that begins Tuesday is over by Thursday, aside from testimony by the Republican front-runner on this 12 months’s presidential race.
He mentioned he beforehand denied Trump’s request to delay the beginning of the trial by per week so Trump might attend the funeral Thursday of his mother-in-law as a result of it might disrupt and inconvenience potential jurors, legal professionals, courtroom employees and safety, who have been notified of the trial date seven months in the past.
The choose additionally famous that he has realized that Trump, even whereas searching for to postpone the trial, had scheduled a night marketing campaign look on Wednesday in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He mentioned Trump’s legal professionals notified the choose on Friday that Trump deliberate to attend the trial.
A jury to be chosen Tuesday previous to opening statements will hear proof pertaining to $10 million in compensatory damages and hundreds of thousands extra in punitive damages requested by attorneys for columnist E. Jean Carroll.
Carroll, 80, received a $5 million intercourse abuse and defamation judgment in Could from a civil jury that heard her testify that Trump attacked her sexually within the dressing room of a luxurious division retailer in midtown Manhattan in spring 1996 after that they had an opportunity assembly that was lighthearted earlier than turning violent.
Trump didn’t attend that trial and has repeatedly mentioned he by no means knew Carroll and believed she made up her claims to advertise a 2019 memoir wherein she first made them publicly and to break him politically.
The jury rejected Carroll’s declare that Trump raped her as rape is outlined by New York state regulation however agreed that he sexually abused her within the division retailer and defamed her with statements he made in October 2022.
This month’s trial, lengthy delayed by appeals, stems from defamatory feedback the choose mentioned Trump made about Carroll in 2019 and final Could, a day after the jury introduced its verdict.
Kaplan dominated final 12 months that the trial beginning Tuesday solely will pertain to damages as a result of the prior jury’s findings about sexual abuse and defamation could be accepted for functions of the brand new trial.
Earlier on Sunday, Trump lawyer Alina Habba objected to restrictions on Trump’s testimony requested by an lawyer for Carroll, saying that regardless of directions already given by the choose, Trump can “nonetheless supply appreciable testimony in his protection.”
She famous that somebody searching for punitive damages in a defamation case in New York state should present that libelous statements have been made out of hatred, unwell will or spite and mentioned Trump must be allowed to supply proof and testimony about whether or not hatred or unwell will was behind his feedback to reporters.
Habba mentioned Trump can also testify concerning the circumstances of his feedback and the way they associated to feedback in Carroll’s “steady parade of interviews and publicity.”
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, requested the choose in a letter on Friday to place restrictions on Trump if he testifies in order that he doesn’t “sow chaos” or “poison these proceedings.”
Kaplan, who will not be associated to the choose, mentioned she feared Trump would attempt to flout the choose’s directions that Trump not contend in his testimony, as he steadily has with public statements on the marketing campaign path, that Carroll fabricated her claims towards him.
In a ruling earlier this month, the choose alluded to the truth that what the jury concluded Trump did to Carroll constitutes rape in some states when he wrote that “the truth that Mr. Trump sexually abused — certainly, raped — Ms. Carroll has been conclusively established and is binding on this case.”
Now Local weather Change on the Newsmaac
