E. Jean Carroll doesn't want Trump to turn defamation lawsuit into a 'circus'

A lawyer for writer E. Jean Carroll, whose latest defamation case against Donald J. Trump is set to take place next week in Manhattan, asked a judge on Friday to ensure that if the former president testifies, he does not stray beyond the narrow issue. in the case, with the aim of 'turning this trial into a circus'.

“If Mr. Trump appears at this trial, whether as a witness or otherwise,” attorney Roberta A. Kaplan wrote in a letter, “his recent statements and behavior strongly suggest that he will attempt to sow chaos.”

In the letter, which comes just four days before jury selection begins in Federal District Court, Ms. Kaplan cited Mr. Trump's continued derogatory public comments about Ms. Carroll and his conduct in another case involving him this week.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump attended the final day of the trial in the New York attorney general's civil fraud case against him, where — after the judge allowed him to argue for himself — he confronted Attorney General Letitia James attacked, who called himself a victim of fraud and attacked the judge in his face. Afterwards, Mr. Trump told reporters that he also planned to attend Ms. Carroll's trial.

“I'm going to explain that I don't know who she is,” he said. “I have no idea.”

But the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, has already ruled that a jury's verdict last May in an earlier civil trial that found Mr. Trump liable for sexually assaulting Ms. Carroll in a department store dressing room in the nineties, had already been said and that he had done so later. who defamed her will be taken to trial next week. The judge has thus limited the trial to one issue: what damages, if any, Mr. Trump should pay Ms. Carroll for defaming her on a separate occasion in 2019, when he called her accusation “completely untrue.”

The request from Ms. Carroll's lawyer to restrain Mr. Trump, 77, comes as he lashed out at her while moving between courthouses and political stops in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination. He recently posted more than 40 mocking posts about her in one day on his Truth Social website, and last weekend, while campaigning in Iowa, he accused her of fabricating her claim and called the judge in the case a “radical Democrat in New York'. York.”

Mr. Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, declined to comment on Ms. Kaplan's letter, citing trial publicity rules. The judge said Friday that Trump had until Sunday to file a response, and Ms. Habba said she would do so.

In her letter, Ms. Kaplan (who is not related to the judge) asked him to alert Mr. Trump to the issue of limited damages for the jury. She also asked that he require Mr. Trump to testify officially and under oath, outside the presence of the jury, that he understands that certain facts have been established.

“The court's recent rulings leave no doubt about what is permitted and what is prohibited,” Ms. Kaplan wrote. “Mr. Trump cannot testify that he did not sexually assault Ms. Carroll. He cannot claim that he did not rape her, did not know her, or never saw her before. He cannot reveal her motives for assaulting her not question or attack. He cannot say he was defending himself against a false accusation.”

The letter asks Mr. Trump to acknowledge that he understands and accepts “any limitations the court has placed on his testimony” and that he will act accordingly.

Mr Trump has been attacking Ms Carroll, 80, since 2019, when she first accused him of rape in a book excerpt published in New York magazine. She has sued him twice, and in the first case that went to trial last May, the jury awarded Ms. Carroll just over $2 million in damages for sexually assaulting her and nearly $3 million for defaming her, in 2022, when he filed her claim. “a complete scam” and a hoax.

Because the judge found that Mr. Trump's 2019 statements were “substantially the same” as those that prompted the defamation ruling last May, there was no need to revisit the underlying facts of the attack.

Ms. Kaplan included in her letter a transcript of Mr. Trump's comments Thursday to the judge deciding the civil fraud trial, in which the former president called the state's case “a political witch hunt” and declared his innocence.

“It doesn't take much imagination to think that Mr. Trump is gearing up for a similar performance here — only this time in front of a jury,” Ms. Kaplan wrote.

Susan C. Beachy research contributed.