As E Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial against Donald Trump neared its final stage Friday morning in New York, proceedings quickly took a turn for the absurd with the judge threatening his lawyer with “lockup” and the ex-president leaving about 10 minutes into the former Elle writer’s closing argument. Trump returned to court for his defense’s closing.
Trump’s abrupt departure came as Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, was delivering her closing argument – shortly after she noted that he had continued to defame the columnist during this very trial. Trump left.
Kaplan had provided a chronology of the harm endured by Carroll due to Trump’s attacks in advance of the remark that appeared to trigger him.
“Donald Trump’s denials and vicious accusations were all complete lies. That has already been proven, right in this courtroom, by a jury,” Kaplan said.
“This case is also about punishing Donald Trump for what he has done and for what he continues to do,” Kaplan said, adding shortly thereafter: “This trial is about getting him to stop, once and for all.”
Kaplan noted that he started to smear Carroll within a day of her last court victory, which found that he had defamed her. “Donald Trump, however, acts as if these rules and laws just don’t apply to him” and pointed out that he spent “this entire trial” attacking Carroll with nefarious posts.
It was right about this time that Trump walked out of court.
“Excuse me,” Judge Lewis Kaplan said. “The record will reflect that Mr Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom.”
At the end of her closing, Roberta Kaplan urged jurors to hold Trump accountable – and insisted that the only way to make him follow the law and stop defaming Carroll would be a hefty penalty.
“The one thing Donald Trump cares about is money,” she said. “While Donald Trump may not care about the law, while he certainly does not care about the truth, he does care about money.
“The question for you as a jury is this: given Donald Trump’s insistence on continuing to defame Ms Carroll and considering his immense wealth, how much will it take to make him stop?
“He thinks the rules that govern everyone else don’t apply to him,” Kaplan added.
Trump’s lead attorney in this case, Alina Habba, started delivering her closing around 11.15am and quickly blamed Carroll for the backlash and suggested the former president was the victim.
Habba said: “There is no one that can truly express the frustration of the last few years better than my client, the former president of the United States.”
Habba then played a video that had been introduced by Carroll’s team in which he doubled down on his denials, in a way her camp contended was defamatory.
“I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. The verdict is a disgrace, a continuation of the greatest witch-hunt of of all time,” Trump said in this video clip.
“You’re right that’s how he feels. Can you imagine a world where someone can accuse you of a terrible accusation and you defend yourself, respond to reporters on the south lawn as the sitting president?” Habba said.
“The president has been consistent. She’s right, he has said this same thing over and over and over again and do you know why he has not wavered? Because it’s the truth,” Habba said, prompting an objection from Carroll’s team.
She then started to attack Carroll’s credibility, which appeared to edge toward breeching Kaplan’s prohibition on litigating the facts.
“If you violate my instructions again, Ms Habba, you may have consequences,” he warned.
Proceedings appeared poised to be rocky before they started.
Within less than 10 minutes of Trump’s arrival to the courtroom, as both sides were discussing items they wanted to include in their closings before jurors entered, the judge threatened Habba, with punishment when she tried to interrupt him, saying: “You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Sit down!”
As closings unfolded, Trump continued to go on the attack against Carroll, with several posts appearing on his Truth Social account, including one calling her account a “hoax”.
Closings came one day after Trump – whom Carroll sued for defamation over his denials of her rape allegation in 2019 – testified for less than five minutes, as the judge had limited what his lawyer could ask him, and what he could say.
The judge had previously ruled that jurors’ findings in Carroll’s first trial against Trump – that he sexually abused her around late 1995 and when she came forward in 2019, defamed her – would apply in this trial. This ruling meant that the ex-president couldn’t re-litigate her claims and, as a result, jurors are only weighing damages in the ongoing proceedings. Trump did not attend the first trial.
One of the questions Habba was allowed to ask was: “Do you stand by your testimony in the deposition?”, during which he denied Carroll’s claim.
“One hundred per cent, yes,” he replied.
“Did you deny the allegation because Ms Carroll made an accusation?” Habba pressed.
“That’s exactly right. She said something, I consider it a false accusation. No difference,” he said, prompting an objection from Carroll’s team. Kaplan ordered that everything after “yes, I did” would be stricken.
“Did you ever instruct anyone to hurt Ms Carroll in your statements?”
“No. I just wanted to defend myself, my family, and frankly, the presidency,” Trump answered, prompting yet another objection. Kaplan ordered that everything after “no” be stricken, meaning jurors were directed to disregard his commentary.
The jury started deliberating at 1.40pm local time.
