E. Jean Carroll tells N.Y. jury that Trump’s attacks harm her

NEW YORK – A federal judge threatened to throw Donald Trump out of court Wednesday after the former president defied an order to keep quiet during writer E. Jean Carroll’s testimony at his defamation trial, which resulted in Trump becoming combative with the jurist.

U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan addressed Trump after being told for the second time by Carroll’s lawyers that Trump, seated at the defense table, was denigrating Carroll loudly enough for the nine-member jury to have heard it. Trump had already received one warning from Kaplan, an official court order.

“Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial,” Kaplan said before a midday break. While Trump has a right to be there, the judge said, “that right can be forfeited … if he is disruptive.”

Trump threw his hands up in an animated show of disapproval.

“I would love it! I would love it!” he said.

Kaplan said that Trump appeared unable to control himself.

“You can’t either!” Trump said.

Carroll, a writer and advice columnist, told a federal jury on Wednesday that Trump’s attacks on her credibility beginning in 2019, after she publicly accused him of a long-ago sexual assault, continue to harm her professionally and put her in fear for her safety.

A jury in a separate civil case last year found that Trump sexually abused and defamed Carroll and owed her $5 million in damages. The trial that started Tuesday is focused on whether the former president owes Carroll additional damages for separate comments he made about her.

Kaplan’s first warning for Trump to exhibit trial decorum came midmorning.

“I’m just going to ask that Mr. Trump take special care to keep his voice down when conferring with counsel so that the jury does not overhear it,” Kaplan said outside the presence of jurors.

Testifying for the second time in a year against Trump, Carroll said disparaging comments by the former president after she accused him of sexual assault decades prior damaged her life.

In a separate trial, Carroll, 80, was awarded $5 million by a jury in May for sexual-abuse-related battery and defamation for comments he made in 2022.

“I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me and when I wrote about it he said it never happened,” Carroll said. “He lied and he shattered my reputation.”

Trump appeared agitated throughout her testimony and he made remarks that could have been heard by the jury, according to Carroll’s attorney Shawn Crowley. He said “these things are false” and “she finally got her memory back,” Crowley told the judge.

Interruptions of that nature could be seen as poisonous to the jury, which is only supposed to consider evidence and testimony in reaching its verdict.

Trump, the Republican front-runner in this year’s presidential election, also attended part of the court proceedings Tuesday, before leaving midday to attend a campaign event in New Hampshire.

Trump has been accused of forcing himself on Carroll in a dressing room in the high-end Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1996. He denies that any encounter occurred and has assailed Carroll as a liar who is seeking fame and money.

Carroll said her reputation to readers and as a reliable source for relationship advice has been changed because of Trump’s flurry of insults, which has generated sometimes hundreds of harassing and threatening social media messages and emails from Trump supporters daily.

“Previously I was known simply as a journalist and had a column and now I’m known as the ‘liar,’ the ‘fraud’ and the ‘whack job,’” Carroll said, citing common Trump refrains relating to her.

Trump is expected to testify Monday. He did not give testimony at the first trial involving Carroll and he is appealing that verdict.

Since the second trial began, Kaplan has scolded Trump lawyer Alina Habba repeatedly for issues involving courtroom decorum. On Wednesday, he chided her for not standing up to voice an objection and for inappropriately making a third request to postpone the trial because Trump has to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral on Thursday.

“It’s denied. Sit down!” Kaplan said.