After all the hemming and hawing and days of delay, former president Donald Trump’s appearance on the witness stand in the Carroll II case was almost comically brief.
As we’ve related at length, Trump is the defendant in this second trial, in Manhattan federal court, on civil claims brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll. In the first trial last year, which Trump did not attend, a jury found him liable for a sexual assault, which Carroll says happened in the mid Nineties, and for defaming her by saying she lied about it. Trump has vehemently denied the allegations, but he passed up the opportunity to testify at the first trial. Consequently, Judge Lewis Kaplan (a Clinton appointee) found that those issues — that Trump committed sexual assault against, and defamed, Carroll — had already been decided and could not be contested by Trump in the second (ongoing) trial, which involves two additional defamation claims but is thus solely about damages. (Carroll was awarded $5 million in the first trial and seeks $10 million this go-round.)
The trial started last week but has been in recess since Monday due to the illness of a juror. There is patent animosity between Trump and Kaplan. It was anticipated that there could be fireworks in court when Trump finally took the stand: He has been adamant about making clear that he denies the sexual abuse and contends that Carroll is lying; again, however, the judge has barred those issues from the trial.
In the event, the only minor incident occurred when Kaplan ordered the ejection from the courtroom of Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, because his phone rang audibly (a no-no).
As the New York Times reports, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba asked the former president and current GOP front-runner whether he stood by public remarks in which he called Carroll a liar. He replied, “100 percent, yes. She said something I considered a false accusation.” Kaplan struck the second sentence from the record — but it’s not like the jurors didn’t hear it or, for that matter, that they are unaware of Trump’s position. Habba asked Trump if he intended to harm Carroll by his statements. Trump answered, “I just wanted to defend myself, my family, and, frankly, the presidency.”
The cross-examination by attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) appears to have been uneventful. Most of the interesting action appears to have been Trump’s protestations outside the jury’s hearing (“I never met this woman [Carroll]”), and Judge Kaplan’s admonition that Trump was to keep his voice down. The judge reportedly added that the jurors would be instructed that, regardless of what they may have heard Trump say, “he did it [i.e., assaulted Carroll] as far as they are concerned, and that is the law.”
The jury has been dismissed for the day. The lawyers for the parties will meet with the judge to go over the legal instructions to be given to the jury before they begin deliberating. That will be after summations, which are scheduled to occur tomorrow morning.