Trump on trial: What to watch for in the second E. Jean Carroll defamation case
Originally Published: 16 JAN 24 05:00 ET Updated: 16 JAN 24 09:57 ET By Lauren del Valle, Kara Scannell and Jeremy Herb, CNN
(CNN) — Donald Trump is in a New York courthouse on Tuesday as he splits his time between the campaign trail and the courtroom with the 2024 presidential primary season officially underway.
The former president will be back on trial beginning Tuesday in Manhattan federal court for a jury to determine how much he will pay in damages for defaming columnist E. Jean Carroll in 2019 statements he made denying her rape allegations.
This is the second trial over Carroll’s allegations that Trump raped her in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996. In the first trial, a jury found Trump sexually abused and defamed Carroll and awarded her $5 million for his statements in 2022 attacking her and denying the allegations.
This jury, however, will not consider the rape allegations or the defamation claim, because the presiding judge determined in a ruling ahead of trial that the jury’s verdict in the first trial will also carry over to this case.
The defamatory statements at issue in this trial were made in June 2019, when Trump was president. Trump said in part, “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?”
Trump is expected to attend at least some of the trial this week, in between the Iowa caucuses and next week’s New Hampshire primary. Trump’s lawyers have suggested he might testify, though Carroll’s lawyers have asked the judge to limit his testimony, arguing he has nothing to testify to because the judge has ruled the sexual assault allegations are not at issue in the trial.
Here’s what to know:
What’s at stake
Carroll is seeking more than $10 million in damages, and the judge has ruled the jury will be able to consider Trump’s comments at a CNN town hall following the 2023 verdict when deciding damages.
Jury selection will begin Tuesday morning.
Carroll won the first trial
Last May, a Manhattan federal jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll and then defamed her in 2022 public statements he made disparaging her and denying the allegations.
The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages for the battery and defamation claims against Trump. Of the award, $2.98 million was for the defamation claim.
Trump is appealing the verdict.
Carroll filed this lawsuit for the 2019 statements first, but the trial was delayed for lengthy litigation over Trump’s legal arguments that he had immunity for the 2019 statements because he made them during his presidency.
The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals denied Trump’s motion to use presidential immunity as a defense at the trial, ruling he waited too long into the litigation to assert it. The court also denied Trump’s request for a re-hearing.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, who’s presiding over the trial beginning this week, ruled the statements in 2019 and 2022 were nearly identical, so this trial will not be a “do over.”
What we could see at trial
The judge has limited the testimony in the present case to damages and harm. The truncated trial is expected to take a few days.
Carroll is expected to testify. Her lawyers have alsoindicated they may play portions of Trump’s 2022 deposition, as well as the widely reported Access Hollywood tape, where Trump can be heard making vulgar comments about his treatment of women to show host Billy Bush.
Kaplan allowed the tape to be played, ruling it could inform the jury on Trump’s views of women who accuse him of assault.
An expert on damages who testified at the first trial, Professor Ashlee Humphreys, is expected to testify again.
Carroll’s lawyers have indicated they’d like to call two other women who testified in the first trial – Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds – and allege Trump sexually assaulted them.
Trump’s lawyers suggested he may testify at the trial, but Kaplan has ordered restrictions on what the former president can say should he take the stand. He will not be allowed to testify that he didn’t assault Carroll, that she lied about the rape allegation, or that his statements were not made with malice since that question is not before the jury.
His defense team has also listed several witnesses they want to call – DavidHaskell, editor in chief of New York magazine in 2019; Sarah Lazin, Carroll’s agent; and the two witnesses who testified at the 2023 trial that Carroll confided in them after the assault, Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin.
The judge was skeptical of what Trump and the witnesses could have to say about damages in this case. He has not ruled on whether they can be called to testify.
Overlapping primary and court calendars
As a civil defendant, Trump is not required to attend the trial, but he is in court on Tuesday and is expected Wednesday.
Trump has made his courtroom appearances a central part of his campaign throughout the past year, making the four criminal indictments against him part of his campaign pitch to be returned to the White House.
But the overlapping primary and court calendar has never been as apparent as this past week, where Trump is effectively leapfrogging back and forth between early primary states and two separate New York courtrooms.
In the New York civil fraud trial, where closing arguments were held last Thursday, Trump used the cameras just outside the courtroom as a megaphone to rail against the case against him from the New York attorney general, which threatens his business empire in the state.
The set-up will be different for the defamation case, which is in federal court, where cameras are not allowed inside the building. Still, Trump’s 40 Wall Street property is not far from the courthouse – and Trump went there to make a statement after leaving the courthouse last week. According to Trump’s schedule he is planning to speak to voters in New Hampshire on Tuesday and Wednesday evening while attending the trial in between.
Trump did not appear in person at all during the first trial with Carroll.
Kaplan denied Trump’s request to postpone the trial one week to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral in Florida on Thursday.
The judge offered his condolences to Donald and Melania Trump and said the former president is free to attend all or parts of the trial or funeral.
Donald Trump took to Truth Social Friday night blasting the judge for denying his request, and he’s attacked Carroll repeatedly in the lead-up to this week’s trial.
Trump on thin ice with the courts
Lawyers for Carroll asked Kaplan to order precautionary restrictions on Trump ahead of trial, citing Trump’s rogue courtroom monologue during closing arguments at his New York civil fraud trial last week.
In a letter last Friday, Carroll attorney Roberta Kaplan asked the presiding judge to consider setting preconditioned limitations on Trump’s courtroom behavior, and even preset sanctions should he violate court orders based on his recent outbursts in state court disregarding the judge’s orders at his civil fraud trial with the New York state attorney general. (Roberta Kaplan is not related to Judge Kaplan.)
“It takes little imagination to think that Mr. Trump is gearing up for a similar performance here — only this time, in front of a jury,” she wrote. “Indeed, as noted above, Mr. Trump promised a second round of this same scenario in his remarks to the press just yesterday.”
Trump’s attorney Alina Habba said in a response filing that Trump was only defending himself and that Carroll’s lawyers took the state court incident out of context.
Trump and his lawyers were fined for violating a gag order barring them from making public statements about the judge’s staff in that state civil trial and admonished several times for courtroom behavior.
Judge Kaplan said in an order that he’s prepared to take measures when necessary, but he didn’t set any conditions ahead of the trial. “The Court will take such measures as it finds appropriate to avoid circumvention of its rulings and of the law,” he wrote.
The judge is also acquainted with Trump’s penchant for out-of-court comments during ongoing proceedings. Last year, during the first trial with Carroll, the judge warned Trump’s lawyers more than once that the former president could be in violation of his rulings and federal laws for negative public comments he made about Carroll, the judge and the trial.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Alayna Treene contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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