The night before the final day of E. Jean Carroll's defamation trial against Donald Trump, the former president took aim at the writer and her legal team while griping about his Monday court appearance to a booing New Hampshire crowd.
"Look, these are crooked people," he said Sunday night. "These are corrupt people. These are corrupt people. But I'm going for trial tomorrow — all done by political operatives." Trump went on to imply, according to RawStory, that the case was a personal attack by Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn billionaire who has been financially supporting Carroll's lawsuit.
"Reid Hoffman, is sponsoring this woman that said terrible things from 30 years ago. He took me — I owned three or four buildings around him. I owned the hotel next to it," Trump continued. "I took her... It's a totally fabricated story. Totally fabricated. And the lawyer is a political operative. Used to be very close to Cuomo. Do you remember him? And a political operative."
Trump's comments came a day after Carroll's lawyer informed U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan via court filing that she will submit a spate of evidence of the former president's public remarks against Carroll amid the trial, according to Business Insider. In addition to alleging the case is "fabricated," Trump has repeated claims that he never knew Carroll and accused her of deleting evidence in the case.
"This is evidence Carroll can use to increase both a compensatory and punitive damages jury award," former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann wrote on X/Twitter, in response to Carroll's filing. "His continued defamation of Carroll, even as the trial is ongoing, is entirely relevant to the jury’s consideration of punitive damages," added MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin.
