Trump appears in Manhattan court for opening of E. Jean Carroll defamation case

Former President Donald Trump attended his defamation damages trial in New York on Tuesday, sitting roughly ten feet away from E. Jean Carroll, the writer whom a civil jury said he was responsible for sexually abusing in the 1990s.

In a post to his Truth Social website hours after his projected victory in Monday's Iowa caucuses, Trump attacked the case as a "giant election interference scam." He added, "I had no idea who this woman was." Trump attended jury selection but left before opening statements began to go to a campaign rally in New Hampshire, so he was not present when Carroll attorney Shawn Crowley told the jury how Trump upended her client's life and that they needed to return a verdict large enough to "make him stop" targeting her. "We submit that number should be very significant," Crowley said.

Trump’s quick hop from a victory speech on Monday night in Iowa to a courtroom in New York on Tuesday morning to a rally in New Hampshire Tuesday night is a microcosm of the former president’s coming year, when he’s expected to oscillate between campaigning and court cases, including four pending criminal trials.

Trump arrived in the courtroom at 9:40 a.m. ET, and took his seat at the defense table. Carroll was seated two rows in front of him and did not turn around. It's believed to be the first time the two have been in the same room in over 25 years. During a break later in the day, she walked out of the courtroom and passed by Trump, who had his back to her.

Trump appeared attentive as U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan questioned potential jurors. At one point, the judge asked whether any of the pool of about 50 people believed the 2020 election was stolen, and after two people said yes, Trump looked over to see which ones. One of the two also answered affirmatively when asked whether they thought Trump was being treated unfairly by the court system.

Neither was among the nine jurors eventually selected. Trump left for a campaign event in New Hampshire shortly before Carroll's attorney was set to begin opening statements.

The judge has already found Trump liable for defaming Carroll in remarks he made as president in 2019 mocking her sexual assault claim, so the jury’s only task will be to decide how much money she should get for those remarks, as well as others he made after a different jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation last year. In a post on Truth Social Tuesday morning as Trump was sitting in the courtroom, he blasted Carroll's account as "fabricated lies and political shenanigans," and that the judge has "been unable to see clearly because of his absolute hatred of Donald J. Trump (ME!)."

The damages trial could result in Trump's being hit with a judgment in the tens of millions of dollars. Carroll's attorney said she expects her case to take two and a half days, and Trump's case one and a half days.

Carroll is seeking at least $10 million for the damage Trump caused to her reputation and most likely several times that amount in punitive damages for continuing to publicly call her account of his sexual abuse a “con job” on TV and social media and at his rallies.

Trump has said he plans to testify in his own defense. “I’m going to explain I don’t know who the hell she is,” he told reporters Thursday.

Before the potential jurors were brought in, Trump's attorney Alina Habba asked Kaplan for a second time if he could postpone the proceedings on Thursday so Trump, who is under no obligation to be in court, could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral in Florida. Trump shook his head as Kaplan denied the request.

In a court filing Friday, Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan said Trump had already been found liable for the assault and, under an earlier order from the judge, couldn't relitigate the issue from the witness stand. She urged the judge to pre-emptively rein Trump in.

"If Mr. Trump appears at this trial, whether as a witness or otherwise, his recent statements and behavior strongly suggest that he will seek to sow chaos," her filing said. "Indeed, he may well perceive a benefit in seeking to poison these proceedings, where the only question for the jury is how much more he will have to pay in damages for defaming Ms. Carroll."

"This Court should make clear from the outset that Mr. Trump is forbidden from engaging in such antics and will suffer consequences if he does so," she added.

Habba argued in a filing Sunday that Kaplan's request was "not appropriate" and should be rejected. She said Trump plans to testify about his state of mind when he made his comments about Carroll and also plans to discuss "Ms. Carroll’s continuous parade of interviews" when she first went public.

In a ruling late Sunday, the judge said simply that the court "will take such measures as it finds appropriate to avoid circumvention of its rulings and of the law."

Trump's attorneys — who had tried to delay the trial several times in the past — had also asked in a separate court filing whether the trial could be delayed for a week because the funeral of Melania Trump's mother Amalija Knavs is on Thursday. The filing said Trump would be traveling with his family to Florida on Wednesday for the funeral and noted that there is no court on Fridays.

Kaplan denied the request but said in a ruling Sunday that if Trump's team wraps up his defense on Thursday, he would allow Trump to return to court to testify next Monday.

He also noted that despite Trump's assertion that Wednesday is a family travel day, "Mr. Trump has scheduled a campaign appearance at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, January 17, 2024 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire."

The trial is the second involving Carroll and Trump.

In a trial before the same judge last year, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll, a magazine writer, in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and for defaming her after he left the White House by calling her a "wack job" and her story a "hoax," among other insults. The jury awarded her $5 million in damages, a verdict Trump is appealing.

Trump had said he would testify in that case, as well, but he ultimately didn’t.

Carroll’s attorneys used — and according to court filings plan to use again — parts of the hourslong videotaped deposition Trump sat for in the case in October 2022 during the trial. In the deposition, Trump called Carroll’s claims a “big fat hoax” and “pure fiction” and insisted that “physically, she’s not my type.”

During questioning, he was shown an old picture of him and Carroll standing together at an event and mistook her for his wife at that time, Marla Maples. “That’s Marla. Yeah, that’s my wife,” he said. After the mistake was pointed out, he said the picture was “very blurry.”

Trump's lawyer in the appeal in that case, Joe Tacopina, told NBC News on Monday he had withdrawn from representing Trump in the case and also in his New York criminal case alleging he falsified business records. Tacopina, a longtime high-profile New York lawyer, declined to comment further on his move, which was first reported by The New York Times.

Carroll went public with her claim that Trump raped her in 2019. She was able to sue Trump over the rape allegation in 2022 after New York passed a law that opened a one-year window for adult victims of sexual offenses to file civil suits, even if the statute of limitations on their claims had expired, as it had for Carroll.

The jury didn’t find Trump liable for rape as defined under New York criminal law but did find him liable for sexual abuse.

As a result of that verdict, Kaplan found Trump liable for defamation in the case going to trial Tuesday, which centers on the then-president's claim he had never met Carroll and assertions that she'd made up the story for publicity for her book and had been paid cash to concoct the story.

"It is a disgrace and people should pay dearly for such false accusations,” Trump said in a statement on June 21, 2019.

Carroll is seeking more money in this case than in the last, arguing Trump's remarks as president caused her more harm than the comments he made about her after his presidency.

The judge's liability finding greatly limits Trump's ability to defend the case, because he can’t deny responsibility for the assault. In court filings in November, Trump's team said it plans to argue that Carroll "did not sustain any reputational or economic harm as a result of the Statements" and that if she did, any such harm was minimal. The judge told potential jurors that Trump's attorneys contend Carroll should receive "nominal" damages and no punitive damages.

As in the first trial, the judge will use an anonymous jury because of “the strong likelihood of unwanted media attention to the jurors, influence attempts, and/or harassment or worse by supporters of Mr. Trump [and/or by Mr. Trump himself].”

He ordered that jurors’ names, addresses and workplaces not be revealed and said the panel will be picked up from and dropped off at an undisclosed location each day.