Ex-president undecided if he’ll attend

Former President Donald Trump has yet to make your mind up if he’ll attend his upcoming rape defamation trial, his attorney told a federal judge Thursday.

Trump and E. Jean Carroll — the author accusing the ex-president of raping her in a department store within the Nineties after which defaming her when she took her story public — faced a Thursday deadline to inform the judge about their attendance plans for the trial.

The defamation trial is scheduled to start in U.S. District Court in Manhattan next Tuesday. In a recent court filing posted Thursday afternoon, Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina told Judge Lewis Kaplan that he couldn’t make a commitment around attendance — yet.

Trump’s decision “will probably be made throughout the course of the trial,” Tacopina wrote. For that reason, “we will not be yet ready to advise the Court on this regard,” he told the judge.

“Nonetheless, we’ll inform the Court as soon as a choice is reached, particularly in light of the logistical concerns that may should be addressed in coordination with the Secret Service, the Marshals Service, and the City of Latest York,” the lawyer wrote.

Carroll plans to attend the whole trial and testify under oath before the jury, her lawyer noted Wednesday in a letter to Kaplan.

If Trump doesn’t show as much as the trial, Tacopina on Wednesday asked Kaplan to inform the jury that the previous president’s absence could be sparing “logistical burdens” on the courthouse and Latest York City. Carroll’s counsel criticized that request as “frivolous,” and the judge ultimately rejected it on Thursday.

“There shall be no reference by counsel for Mr. Trump within the presence of the jury panel or the trial jury to Mr. Trump’s alleged desire to testify or to the burdens that any absence on his part allegedly might spare, or might need spared, the Court or the City of Latest York,” the judge wrote Thursday.

Each parties’ lawyers noted to Kaplan that Trump has traveled to Latest York recently with a purpose to reply to separate legal matters.

Earlier this month, Trump was arrested and arraigned in Manhattan on dozens of charges of falsifying business records in connection to hush money payments made before the 2016 presidential election. The indictment from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made Trump the primary ex-president ever to face criminal charges.

Tacopina, who can also be defending Trump in that case, cited the spectacle attributable to his arraignment to bolster his argument that it might be too difficult for him to point out up for Carroll’s trial.

Carroll’s lawyer, in her reply to Tacopina, noted that Trump has also recently come to Manhattan to take a seat for a deposition with the Latest York Attorney General’s office, which is prosecuting a civil case into the previous president’s business practices.

She also noted that Trump, now a number one contender for the 2024 presidential nomination, is scheduled to to travel to Latest Hampshire for a campaign event in late April — “in other words, in the midst of the trial on this case.”

If he can attend those and other events, “then surely he could surmount the logistics of attending his own federal trial,” Carroll’s attorney wrote.

Carroll’s lawsuit alleges that Trump raped her in a dressing room of the Latest York City department store Bergdorf Goodman within the mid-Nineties. She got here forward with the accusation in 2019, while Trump was president.

Trump accused Carroll of lying, and told news outlet The Hill, “She’s not my type.” He lashed out at her again in 2022, accusing her of adjusting her story and “promoting a extremely crummy book.”