Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
After days of speculation and anticipation, Donald Trump took the stand in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against him on Thursday, testifying for less than five minutes.
Under strict instructions by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan that barred Trump denying he sexually assaulted Carroll in the 1990s, Trump still attempted to bend the rules during his questioning from his attorney, Alina Habba, prompting a quick admonishment from Judge Kaplan.
Trump’s cross-examination from Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who is unrelated to the judge, was even more brief.
With Trump likely to be the defense’s final witness, it was an anticlimactic end to a years long legal saga. In a 2019 New York cover story, Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. Trump denied the allegation, claiming that he had never met her before and accused Carroll of lying. The former Elle columnist then sued Trump for defamation. Last May, the jury in the civil trial found Trump liable for both sexual assault and defamation after deliberating for less than three hours. This trial will determine how much Trump will be ordered to pay Carroll in damages.
Trump has been attacking Carroll on his platform TruthSocial since the trial began, the tenor escalating as his time to testify approached. The day before he took the stand, the former president sought to undermine Carroll’s credibility by resurfacing old social media posts of hers. “THIS IS A FALSE ACCUSATION FORCED INTO THE PUBLIC EYE BY DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES LIKE HER LAWYER, HER FUNDERS, AND OTHERS. LOOK AT HER MANY CRAZY TWEETS, THEY SAY IT ALL — Another HOAX, just like Russia, Russia, Russia,” he wrote in one post.
Nia Prater
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