NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump rejected his final probability Sunday to testify at a civil trial the place a longtime recommendation columnist has accused him of raping her in a luxurious division retailer dressing room in 1996.
Trump, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, was given till 5 p.m. Sunday by U.S. District Decide Lewis A. Kaplan to file a request to testify. Nothing was filed.
It was not a shock. Trump has not proven up as soon as through the two-week Manhattan trial the place author E. Jean Carroll testified for a number of days, repeating claims she first made publicly in a 2019 memoir. She is searching for compensatory and punitive damages totaling hundreds of thousands of {dollars}.
The jury has additionally watched prolonged excerpts from an October videotaped deposition through which Trump vehemently denied raping Carroll or ever actually realizing her.
With out Trump’s testimony, legal professionals have been scheduled to make closing arguments Monday, with deliberations more likely to start on Tuesday.
After prosecutors rested their case Thursday, Trump legal professional Joe Tacopina instantly rested the protection case as properly with out calling any witnesses. He didn’t request extra time for Trump to determine to testify. Tacopina declined in an e-mail to remark after the deadline handed Sunday.
On Thursday, Kaplan had given Trump additional time to vary his thoughts and request to testify, although the choose didn’t promise he would grant such a request to reopen the protection case so Trump might take the stand.
On the time, Kaplan famous that he’d heard about information stories Thursday through which Trump informed reporters whereas visiting his golf course in Doonbeg, Eire, that he would “most likely attend” the trial. Trump additionally criticized Kaplan, a Invoice Clinton appointee, as an “extraordinarily hostile” and “tough choose” who “does not like me very a lot.”
On the witness stand, Carroll, 79, testified that Trump, 76, raped her in spring 1996 after they met on the entrance of the midtown Manhattan division retailer Bergdorf Goodman.
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She stated the encounter started as a enjoyable and flirtatious outing as Trump coaxed her into serving to him store for a present for an additional girl. She stated they ended up within the retailer’s desolate lingerie part, the place they teased one another to strive on a see-through bodysuit.
As Carroll recalled it, laughter accompanied them right into a dressing room the place Trump grew to become violent, slamming her up in opposition to a wall, pulling apart her tights and raping her earlier than she kneed him and fled the shop.
In his deposition, Trump stated Carroll made it up. He referred to as it “a false, disgusting lie” delivered by a “nut job” who was attempting to stoke gross sales of her e-book.
He additionally repeated feedback he made in statements that she was not his “sort.”
“She’s not my sort and that’s 100% true,” he stated.
And he repeated his claims in a 2005 “Entry Hollywood” video through which he bragged that males who’re celebrities can seize ladies by the genitals with out asking.
“Traditionally that’s true with stars,” he stated.
Carroll sued Trump in November, minutes after New York state enacted a regulation permitting grownup sexual assault victims to sue others even when the assaults occurred many years earlier.
Carroll’s legal professional, Roberta Kaplan, wrote a letter to the choose Sunday to complain that Trump nonetheless has not eliminated April 26 posts on his social media community through which he referred to as Carroll’s allegations “a made up SCAM.” And she or he famous that he repeated disparaging remarks in regards to the trial three days in the past in Eire.
After the April 26 postings on Fact Social, Decide Kaplan, who just isn’t associated to Carroll’s lawyer, stated Trump’s feedback have been “extremely inappropriate” and expressed concern that Trump was attempting to speak to the jury “about stuff that has no enterprise being spoken about.”
The Related Press usually doesn’t identify individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted until they arrive ahead publicly, as Carroll has completed.