After his great victory in the republican assemblies of Iowa, former President Donald Trump must appear in the next few hours in a court where a new judicial challenge awaits him: determining how much he should pay journalist E. Jean Carroll for denying that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and accusing her of lying in their complaints.
Jury selection in federal court in Manhattan will begin in the morning. Opening statements could take place the same afternoon in what is essentially the penalty phase of a legal fight already won by Carroll.
In May, another jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the locker room of a store in 1996 and defamed her in 2022 by claiming that she made up the incident after revealing it in her memoir published in 2019. The jury said Carroll had not proven that Trump raped her.
That jury sentenced Trump to pay $5 million, but did not determine how much he should pay for statements he made about Carroll being president. That will be the task of the current jury.
Will Trump testify in court about sexual assault allegation?
He Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled last year that the new jury should not decide again whether there was sexual abuse or defamation by Trump, since the first trial resolved those issues.
Trump is expected to attend Tuesday’s session. His plans for the rest of the week were unclear, as his mother-in-law’s funeral will be held on Thursday. The trial is expected to last several days.
The former president has said that he wants to declare, but in that case strict limits will be imposed. He did not attend the first trial because his lawyer advised him not to, he said recently.
Since the only issue is how much Carroll should be paid, the judge has warned lawyers that they cannot say what Trump has said in the presidential campaign and elsewhere, such as accusing her of lying about him to promote her memoirs.
Kaplan also prohibited them from talking about “previous relationships, sexual disposition and previous sexual experiences” of Carroll, or implying that Trump did not sexually abuse the journalist.
