As Trump continues to insult E. Jean Carroll, the second defamation trial opens

A jury in Manhattan will be asked a narrow question this week: How much money should former President Donald J. Trump pay writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after she accused him of raping her?

Ms. Carroll's chance encounter decades ago at the Bergdorf Goodman department store, in which she said Trump pushed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her pantyhose and forced himself on her, was already the subject of a lawsuit last year. A jury in May awarded Ms. Carroll just over $2 million for the assault and nearly $3 million for defamation following Mr. Trump's October 2022 comment calling her claim “a complete scam.”

The trial, which begins Tuesday, focuses on separate statements made by Mr. Trump in June 2019, immediately after Ms. Carroll revealed her accusation in New York magazine. At the time, Mr. Trump called her claim “completely untrue,” saying he had never met Ms. Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, and that she had made up a story to sell a book.

Now Mr. Trump says he wants to attend Ms. Carroll's trial and testify, something he did not do in the earlier case. That has led to a bitter dispute between lawyers for Ms. Carroll, 80, and Mr. Trump, 77, over what the former president might say if he took the stand, and whether he would stray outside the strict boundaries the judge has stated.

The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, has ruled that, given the jury's findings in the first trial, Mr. Trump cannot now dispute Ms. Carroll's version of events — as he often does in public statements.

“Mr. Trump is prohibited from offering any testimony, evidence or argument showing or implying that he did not sexually assault Ms. Carroll, that she fabricated her account of the assault, or that she had any motive to do so” , Judge Kaplan wrote in an opinion dated January 9.

The judge had also previously ruled that Ms. Carroll would not have to prove again that Trump's 2019 comments were defamatory, finding they were substantially the same as the comments that prompted last year's award.

“This trial will not be a 'redo' of the previous trial,” Judge Kaplan wrote on January 9.

Ms. Carroll is seeking $10 million in damages for damage to her reputation, plus unspecified damages intended to deter misconduct.

Yet Mr. Trump continues to attack her relentlessly, repeating that he has never met Ms. Carroll and denying that he attacked her. Minutes after last year's ruling, he began posting a stream of blistering messages on his Truth Social website, and later took to CNN, where he called Ms. Carroll a “crazy job” and said the trial was “a rigged deal.” ”

In recent weeks he has escalated those attacks. In one day at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, he posted a rapid stream of more than forty mocking Truth Social posts, stunning some advisers with the fusillade. On January 6, while campaigning in Iowa, he again said that Ms. Carroll had falsified her story.

When Trump was allowed to speak in court on Thursday during the civil fraud trial against him in New York, he attacked a judge in his face. Afterward, Mr. Trump announced that he would attend Ms. Carroll's trial, “and I'm going to explain that I don't know who she is.”

On Friday, Ms. Carroll's lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, wrote to Judge Kaplan in federal court, saying that if Mr. Trump were to appear at the trial as a witness or otherwise, “his recent statements and conduct strongly indicate that he will try to sow chaos.”

“There are a number of reasons why Mr. Trump might see a personal or political benefit from deliberately turning this process into a circus,” Ms. Kaplan said. (She is not related to Judge Kaplan.)

Ms. Kaplan asked that the judge, a veteran of nearly three decades on the court, require Mr. Trump to testify under oath that he understands what testimony is prohibited, such as claiming he did not rape or know Ms. Carroll, or questioned her. motifs.

Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, responded in a letter on Sunday asking the judge to deny Ms. Kaplan’s request, saying it “posed unprecedented hurdles.”

She said Trump was “well aware” of the court's rulings “and of the strict limitations placed on his testimony.”

“We assume that this is not a third-world country kangaroo court,” Ms. Habba added, “where a party in a lawsuit is involuntarily forced to say what a court and an opposing party want them to say.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump's attacks on Ms. Carroll have not ended. On Friday, Judge Kaplan denied Trump's request to delay the trial for a week so he could travel to Florida for the funeral of Melania Trump's mother.

Mr. Trump went on to tell Truth Social, calling Judge Kaplan a “crazy, Trump-hating judge” who had presided over an “election interference witch hunt, disguised as a trial, against a woman I have never met before.”

“Can anyone imagine a man not going to his wife's mother's funeral because of a MADE-UP STORY,” Trump barked.

Ms. Kaplan and Ms. Habba have declined to comment on the case in recent days. However, legal experts doubt Trump's approach.

Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School who studies the legal profession, said: “Anytime I can't think of a Trump legal strategy, I usually think it's not a legal strategy, it's actually a PR strategy.”

Trump probably assumes he will lose, she said. “He just wants to claim that this is a political hit, so he gives himself the material to do that.”

As for Ms. Carroll, substantial damages could be the most effective way to stop Trump's attacks, said Chris Mattei, a lawyer who helped the families of eight people killed in the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. . , wins $1.4 billion from Alex Jones, the Infowars conspiracy broadcaster.

“You would expect Ms. Carroll to present all available evidence,” Mr. Mattei said, “to demonstrate that Donald Trump is recalcitrant and determined to continue doing her harm.”

Ben Chew, a Washington DC lawyer who represented actor Johnny Depp in a defamation case against his ex-wife, said money is Trump's vulnerable spot.

“It's really the only way the court or jury can put an end to this,” he said.

Mr. Trump has long been infuriated by Ms. Carroll's allegations, and privately he has repeatedly railed against her.

At the trial last spring, Ms. Carroll testified that the Bergdorf attack occurred after she encountered Mr. Trump one evening and he asked her to help him buy a gift for a friend.

They ended up in the lingerie department, where he waved her into a dressing room, closed the door and began assaulting her. He used his weight to hold her down, pulled down her panties and pushed his fingers and then, she said, his penis into her vagina. However, the jury did not find that he had raped her.

Judge Kaplan ruled that because the jury found that Mr. Trump had used his fingers to assault her, her rape claim was “substantially true in modern language.”

Kellen Browning contributed reporting from Newton, Iowa, and Susan Beachy research contributed.