Joe Tacopina, lawyer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, questions former Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan as Carroll’s deposition plays on a monitor, during a civil trial where Carroll accuses the previous U.S. president in a civil lawsuit of raping her in a department store dressing room within the mid-Nineties, and of defamation, in Latest York, May 1, 2023 on this courtroom sketch.
Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
A lawyer for former President Donald Trump said Wednesday said he is not going to present any witnesses at his civil trial for a lawsuit accusing him of raping the author E. Jean Carroll within the mid-Nineties and defaming her last fall when he again denied her claim.
Trump’s attorney Joseph Tacopina told Judge Lewis Kaplan that the one expert witness he planned to call to the witness stand is unable to testify attributable to a health issue.
On Tuesday, Tacopina said the 76-year-old Trump wouldn’t testify before the jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Trump has not appeared in that court because the trial began last week.
However the presumptive frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination was in Scotland on Monday to interrupt ground for a recent golf course.
A videotape of Trump’s deposition for the case is likely to be played later Wednesday for jurors.
That tape includes footage from the so-called “Access Hollywood” tape, wherein Trump bragged to that show’s then-host Billy Bush about groping and kissing women without their consent.
“I’m mechanically interested in beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I do not even wait,” Trump says on that tape, recorded in 2005 when he was taping a segment of the tv show “Access Hollywood.”
“And if you’re a star, they allow you to do it. You possibly can do anything. “Grab ’em by the p—-,” Trump said.
Carroll’s sister, Cande Carroll, was attributable to take the witness stand, followed by Natasha Stoynoff, who claims Trump assaulted her at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005. Â
Kaplan told jurors Wednesday that they’ll start deliberations within the case next week.
Carroll’s lawyers expect to rest their case on Thursday.
Carroll, 79, alleges that Trump raped her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan after a likelihood encounter with him there.
He has denied raping her, and even being in the shop together with her that date. Trump has also said he wouldn’t have even had consensual sex together with her because she was not his “type.”
Nonetheless, during questioning under oath by Carroll’s lawyer for his deposition, Trump mistook Carroll for his former wife Marla Maples in a photograph that shows Carroll and her then-husband John Johnson with Trump and his then-wife Ivana Trump.
From L-R: Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll, John Johnson and Ivana Trump at an NBC party, late Eighties.
Source: U.S. District Court in Manhattan
Carroll’s lawsuit claims battery by Trump for the alleged rape.
The criminal statute of limitations for rape has long passed, but a recently enacted Latest York state law allows adults alleging sexual misconduct to file civil claims inside a one-year window if those claims otherwise are barred by the statute of limitations.
