Global Courant 2023-05-08 17:11:31
Former President Donald Trump will not testify in the civil trial over allegations that he raped writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.
His lawyers did not apply by the 5 p.m. Sunday deadline that Judge Lewis Kaplan set for them to notify the court if he wanted to testify. Closing arguments in the trial begin at 10 a.m. Monday.
Attorneys for Trump and Carroll dropped their cases in the civil suit last week. Kaplan left open the option for Trump, who had said he would not appear in person, to take the witness stand in defense, giving him time to change his mind.
Former advisory columnist E. Jean Carroll arrives at the federal courthouse in New York on May 4.John Minchillo/AP
Trump’s lawyers said last week that their client will not testify and they will not call witnesses — a position that attorney Joe Tacopina reiterated at the end of court on Thursday when he let their case rest. He told the judge that he had spoken with Trump earlier that day and that the former president had waived his right to testify.
Trump, however, told reporters at a golf course in Ireland last week that he was “going back to New York” because of the case.
When asked if he will attend the trial, he said: “I will probably attend,” according to one Sky News video of his comments. “She’s fake,” he said of Carroll. “It is a shame.”
Carroll sued Trump for libel and defamation, alleging that he raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s and then falsely accused her of making claims that amounted to a “hoax” and a conman”. she went public with the allegations in 2019. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations.
