Choose blocks Trump legal professionals from arguing about columnist’s rape declare at upcoming defamation trial | U.S.

A decide late Saturday stated former President Donald Trump’s legal professionals can’t current authorized arguments to a jury assessing damages at a defamation trial on a jury’s conclusion final yr that he didn’t rape a columnist within the mid-Nineties.

U.S. District Choose Lewis A. Kaplan made the dedication in an order upfront of a Jan. 16 trial to find out defamation damages towards Trump after a jury concluded Trump sexually abused columnist E. Jean Carroll however didn’t discover proof was adequate to conclude that he raped her.

Trump, talking in Iowa on Saturday because the Republican frontrunning presidential candidate upfront of a Jan. 15 main, criticized the decide as a “radical Democrat” and mocked E. Jean Carroll for not screaming when she was attacked. “It was all made up,” he stated.

Carroll, 80, gained a $5 million award final Might from a jury that concluded Trump sexually abused her in 1996 in a luxurious division retailer dressing room and defamed her in 2022.

Trump didn’t attend the Manhattan trial the place Carroll testified that an opportunity encounter at a Bergdorf Goodman retailer throughout the road from Trump Tower was flirtatious and enjoyable till he slammed her towards a wall in a dressing room and attacked her sexually. Trump has vehemently denied it.

On this month’s trial, a jury will take into account whether or not damages needs to be levied towards Trump for remarks he made after final yr’s verdict and in 2019 whereas he was president after Carroll spoke publicly for the primary time about her mid-Nineties claims in a memoir.

Carroll’s legal professionals had requested the decide to concern the order, saying that Trump’s attorneys shouldn’t be allowed to confuse jurors this month about final yr’s verdict by attempting to argue that the jury disbelieved Carroll’s rape declare.

They stated the jury’s discovering mirrored its conclusion that Trump had forcibly and with out consent digitally penetrated Carroll’s vagina, which doesn’t represent rape beneath New York state legislation however which constitutes rape in different jurisdictions.

Carroll’s legal professionals stated the “sting of the defamation was Mr. Trump’s assertions that Ms. Carroll’s cost of sexual abuse was a wholly untruthful fabrication and one made up for improper and even nefarious causes.”

A lawyer for Trump didn’t instantly return a message Saturday.

Carroll is looking for $10 million in compensatory damages and considerably extra in unspecified punitive damages on the trial. She’s going to testify and Trump is listed as a witness. The trial is predicted to final a couple of week.

In the meantime, Trump has pleaded not responsible to felony costs in 4 indictments, two of which accuse him of looking for to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election, in addition to a categorized paperwork case and costs that he helped prepare a payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels to silence her earlier than the 2016 presidential election.

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