New York | The day after his large victory in Iowa, Donald Trump is expected on Tuesday at a new trial in New York, sued for the second time in civil court for defamation by an author who has already had him convicted in 2023 for sexual assault.
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More than ever a favorite in the Republican primaries after easily winning the Midwest state caucus, Donald Trump, 77, announced Thursday his intention to come and defend himself in person in the courtroom against the former Elle columnist, E .Jean Carroll, 80 years old.
If he attends the opening of the debates on Tuesday, as several American media said on Monday evening, he will then continue his campaign the same day in New Hampshire, the next state to vote for the primaries, where his supporters are waiting for him at the end of the day.
“I have never seen this woman in my life (…) I have no idea who she is,” Donald Trump reaffirmed Thursday about the writer, whom he continued to describe as a liar , or “crazy”, despite his resounding civil conviction in May to pay him five million dollars for sexual assault in 1996 and defamation in 2022.
The plaintiff’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote to the judge expressing concern that the Republican would turn the hearing into a “circus” and “seek to sow chaos.”
Targeted, with that of Tuesday, by at least six civil and criminal trials, the rich 77-year-old businessman transformed each of his indictments or his appearances into a political platform, multiplying virulent invectives against judges and prosecutors, whom he accuses of leading a “witch hunt” to prevent him from winning the presidential election in November.
“It’s not me they’re targeting. It’s you,” he proclaims in capital letters on his website, addressing his supporters.
Act 2
The trial, which opens Tuesday with jury selection and is expected to last several days, is a second act of sorts.
On May 9, 2023, twelve jurors of the federal civil court in Manhattan unanimously decided that Donald Trump was responsible for a “sexual assault” on E. Jean Carroll, in 1996, in a fitting room. a New York department store, and that he had also defamed her in October 2022.
The jurors sentenced Donald Trump, who appealed and was never criminally prosecuted in this case, to five million dollars in damages.
But E. Jean Carroll had also filed a complaint for defamation for previous statements by Donald Trump, in June 2019, in the wake of his first accusations of rape contained in a book.
Then President of the United States, he claimed that the author, who was “not his type”, had invented everything to “sell a new book”. The proceedings had been delayed by procedural battles, but a second trial was still scheduled.
A sign of the tensions surrounding the Donald Trump trials, Judge Lewis Kaplan (who is not related to lawyer Roberta Kaplan) imposed anonymity on the jurors. He also warned “that the only issue at stake at trial will be the harm caused to Mme Carroll by the comments” which he already considers “defamatory”, “false”, and “malicious”.
E. Jean Carroll is seeking at least $10 million in damages for her moral and professional harm.
In the middle of the primary campaign, the trial will once again raise the question of the behavior towards women of Donald Trump, accused several times of sexual assault, but never criminally convicted.