NEW YORK – Lawyers for former President Donald Trump say he may testify at a mid-January civil trial set to make a decision how a lot he owes a columnist for defaming her after she stated he sexually abused her 3 a long time in the past in a Manhattan luxurious division retailer.
The lawyers filed papers in Manhattan federal court docket overdue Thursday to request that Trump’s October 2022 deposition transcript in the case now not be proven to the jury as a result of Trump “has been named as a witness to testify at this trial.”
The lawyers — Alina Habba and Michael Madaio — didn’t reply to an electronic mail Friday searching for remark.
The columnist, 80-year-old E. Jean Carroll, is making plans to testify at the trial, slated to begin Jan. 16, about how her lifestyles has been affected and threats she has confronted since Trump claimed that he by no means knew her and that she was once making false accusations towards him.
The former Elle mag columnist is looking for $10 million in compensatory damages and considerably extra in punitive damages after a jury at a Manhattan trial last May discovered she have been sexually abused by means of Trump in spring 1996 in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman retailer around the boulevard from Trump Tower, the place Trump resided.
Carroll testified at that trial that her flirtatious come across with Trump appeared lighthearted and a laugh as she accompanied him on a seek for a present for his buddy in the shop’s desolate undies house. But she stated it became violent throughout the dressing room when they dared each and every different to check out on a work of undies.
She stated Trump shoved her towards a wall and raped her. The jury rejected the rape declare, however agreed that he sexually abused her. It awarded $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation that came about with feedback Trump made in fall 2022.
The defamation declare at stake in the January trial arose after Trump, whilst he was once nonetheless president, angrily denounced the assertions Carroll first publicly made in a memoir printed in 2019. That lawsuit has been not on time for years by means of appeals. Added to the lawsuit are claims that Trump defamed her once more with remarks he made publicly after the primary verdict.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan dominated previous this 12 months that the primary trial’s defamation verdict signifies that most effective damages should be determined in January at a trial anticipated to final a couple of week. A brand new jury might be selected for it. Kaplan has ordered the jurors be stored nameless, in phase because of “Trump’s repeated public statements” about Carroll and more than a few courts.
During the final trial sooner than Kaplan, Trump recommended in public remarks that he would possibly attend the trial, however he by no means confirmed up.
In fresh months, regardless that, he has testified at a civil trial in New York state court docket over claims that the corporate he created to observe over his numerous houses fraudulently manipulated the worth of property to procure loans.
And he has seemed in court docket to plead now not accountable to criminal charges in four indictments, two of which accuse him of searching for to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, in addition to a categorised paperwork case and fees that he helped organize a payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels to silence her sooner than the 2016 presidential election.
A request to put off the January trial whilst problems stay pending sooner than an appeals court docket, together with whether or not Trump is secure by means of absolute immunity for remarks made whilst he was once president, was once rejected Thursday by means of the 2d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.