Donald Trump interrupted closing arguments in E. Jean Carroll's second defamation suit against the former president when he stormed out of the courtroom Friday morning.
"Excuse me," District Judge Lewis Kaplan said, stopping Carroll's lawyer mid-sentence during her closing arguments. "The record will reflect that Donald Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom."
Judge Kaplan then told Trump's entourage to refrain from following him and remain seated.
"Defense counsel ought to remain seated. And that includes you, Mr. Epshteyn, even though you aren't part of the defense counsel," Kaplan warned, Politico reported. As the judge has previously admonished, Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn is not allowed to stand and speak in Kaplan's court.
Trump stood up and left the courtroom immediately after Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, called out his continued defamation of her client. "Donald Trump, however, acts as if these rules or law just don’t apply to him," Kaplan told the jury.
"Did he respect the jury verdict?" she asked of a previous jury ruling last spring which found Trump liable of sexual abuse and defamation. "No. Not at all. Not even for 24 hours."
Before storming out of the Manhattan courtroom, Trump took to social media early Friday to bash writer Carroll and the defamation lawsuit she brought against him following his brief testimony during Thursday's trial hearing. In a video posted to Truth Social, he again denied even knowing Carroll and sexually abusing her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. The former president also characterized the ongoing trial as a "disgrace to our country."
"I don't even know who this woman is. I have no idea who she is, where she came from. This is another scam, it's a political witch hunt, and somehow we're going to have to fight this stuff," Trump began in the 57-second video message. "We cannot let our country go into this abyss, this is disgraceful."
He went on to describe his attorney's effort to introduce evidence in the trial claiming a link between Carroll's legal bills and George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist who is often the subject of conspiracy theories over his financial support of Democratic and liberal matters. Carroll's case has been financially supported by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who has previously partnered with Soros to establish an organization. No evidence suggests, however, that Soros is involved in Carroll's lawsuit. Judge Kaplan denied Trump's request Thursday.
"You have a woman that's financed and lied about it, she totally lied about it, by Democrat operatives like just about the biggest one there is. And she said that wasn't true. They found that she lied about it," Trump added in the clip. "And the judge wasn't even I guess letting it be put in as evidence. The whole thing is a scam, and it's a shame and it's a disgrace to our country."
The former president's online rant came after he took to the witness stand Thursday in a short testimony heavily restricted by the judge's guidelines prohibiting Trump from denying the sexual abuse.
"It's not America. It's not America. This is not America," he muttered on his way out.
