(New York) Three questions, less than five minutes: Donald Trump defended himself Thursday in the defamation lawsuit filed in New York by the author E. Jean Carroll, but his freedom of speech was strictly limited by the judge, to avoid any verbal slippage.
In a heavy atmosphere, facing the nine jurors and his accuser, who had accused him of rape and had him convicted in civil court in 2023 for sexual assault, the former President of the United States was only authorized to to yes or no answers to the three questions asked by his lawyer Alina Habba.
The big favorite in the Republican primary for the 2024 presidential election was simply able to confirm, “100%”, his testimony during the procedure. And he indicated with a “yes” that he had made the comments targeted by the complaint, in June 2019, to defend himself from the accusations of rape that had just been made, for the first time publicly, by E. Jean Carroll in a book .
“She said something that I considered to be false,” he tried to elaborate, before Judge Lewis Kaplan immediately cut him off. “Mr. Trump, lower your voice,” he had told him a little earlier, while he was imposing the framework of the deposition on the lawyer.
“This is not America”
On Wednesday evening, on his Truth Social platform, Donald Trump launched no less than 37 written attacks against E. Jean Carroll, whom he has continued to denigrate and insult for months by calling her “crazy”, ” bogus story”, which he has “never seen [sa] life “. “She is sick,” he repeated during his testimony in the proceedings in October 2022, which the jurors were able to view during the morning.
PHOTO BRENDAN MCDERMID, REUTERS
E. Jean Carroll
Visibly frustrated and furious, Donald Trump, 77, shook his head in annoyance as he testified. “This is not America,” he said as he left the courtroom in Manhattan federal court.
Since January 16, the civil trial has been against E. Jean Carroll, 80 years old and former columnist for the American edition of the magazine Sheto the former president of the United States.
The author has already had her civilly sentenced in May 2023 to $5 million in compensation for sexual assault in a fitting room of a New York department store in 1996 and already a first time for defamation for comments held in 2022, a verdict rendered unanimously by a popular jury.
Freedom of speech
But she had already filed a complaint for defamation in 2019, when Donald Trump, to deny rape accusations, claimed that she had invented everything to “sell a new book”. The procedure had been delayed, but this second trial was maintained and E. Jean Carroll is claiming more than 10 million dollars for moral and professional damage.
Judge Kaplan, who presided over the first trial, ordered that the second should focus only on Donald Trump’s comments and not on E.’s rape accusations. John Carroll.
More than ever a favorite of the Republicans after his victories in the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, Donald Trump is the target, including this affair, of six criminal or civil trials.
But he has transformed each of his indictments or his appearances into a political platform, multiplying virulent invectives against the judges and prosecutors, whom he accuses of leading a “witch hunt” to prevent him from winning the presidential election in November.
His verbal attacks opened a debate on his freedom of speech in the courtroom, with some judges considering that in the age of social networks, they could encourage threats or acts of intimidation against jurors or witnesses.
Thus, an appeals court confirmed in December that Donald Trump was prohibited from making any comments against court staff or witnesses, as part of his upcoming trial over accusations of unlawful attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Proceedings in the lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll are scheduled to conclude this Friday with closing arguments, before the jury retires to deliberate.