U.S President Donald Trump attends the 2019 National Prayer Breakfast on February 7, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Chris Kleponis / Pool / Getty Images
Citing former President Donald Trump’s history of verbally attacking people within the legal system, a federal judge ruled Thursday that a jury shall be anonymous at his upcoming civil trial for allegedly defaming a author after she accused him of raping her.
“Mr. Trump repeatedly has attacked courts, judges, various law enforcement officials and other public officials, and even individual jurors in other matters,” Manhattan U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his order.
Kaplan noted that Trump’s recent calls for public protests over his belief that he’ll soon be indicted in an unrelated criminal probe in Latest York “has been perceived by some as an incitement to violence.” Trump in that probe is being eyed for a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
“If jurors’ identities were disclosed, there could be a robust likelihood of unwanted media attention to the jurors, influence attempts, and/or of harassment or worse of jurors by supporters of Mr. Trump,” Kaplan wrote.
Kaplan said he would keep secret the names, addresses and places of employment of prospective jurors for the rape defamation trial, which is about to start April 25.
Author E. Jean Carroll accuses Trump of slandering her after she wrote a 2019 magazine article that said he raped her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman’s department store after a probability encounter there within the mid-Nineties.
Her lawsuit also makes a claim of battery for the purported assault under a recent Latest York law that temporarily lifts the statute of limitations for old rape and molestation claims.
Trump denies the allegation, which was made when he was president. He claimed Carroll lied about it because she was motivated by political animus and a desire to sell copies of a book that detailed the alleged attack.
Neither Trump nor Carroll had objected to Kaplan’s suggestion two weeks ago that the case be tried before an anonymous jury.
However the Associated Press news service and The Every day News in Latest York opposed that concept in a court filing, which cited the presumptive right to public access to information in regards to the jury members.
In his ruling Thursday, Kaplan noted that Trump recently made critical statements in regards to the forewoman of an Atlanta, Georgia, grand jury that heard evidence of his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss in that state, and a number of other years ago in regards to the foreperson in his ally Roger Stone’s criminal trial jury.
Kaplan also wrote that a number of the 1,000 people arrested for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot “have argued that their actions were attributable to” what was perceived “as incitement by Mr. Trump.”
The ruling noted that the upcoming trial in Carroll’s suit is prone to get much more media attention than the the case already has received and that Kaplan was obliged to contemplate “the likely effect on jurors.”
“And [the judge] cannot properly ignore the numerous risk that jurors chosen to serve on this case shall be affected by concern that they might be targeted for unwanted media attention, outside pressure, and retaliation and harassment from individuals unhappy with any verdict that is perhaps returned,” Kaplan wrote.
Kaplan said the correct to public access to jury information shouldn’t be unqualified.
He ordered that jurors chosen for trial shall be kept together during recess and lunch, and brought to undisclosed locations which they then will leave to return to their homes every day.
