Donald Trump attends jury selection at NYC trial against E. Jean Carroll, tells court he’ll testify

NEW YORK — Donald Trump, fresh off his victory in the Iowa caucuses, turned up at federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday to attend writer E. Jean Carroll’s second trial against him, months after she proved he sexually abused and defamed her — a fact he scowled at when it was explained to a new set of jurors.

Among the panel of nine jurors selected to decide the case was a New York City transit worker, an emergency medical physician and a publicist for a big tech company. The panelists, who Judge Lewis Kaplan previously ruled would remain anonymous, will be transported to and from court each day from secret locations.

They will be asked to determine how much Trump owes Carroll for defamatory comments he made in June 2019 after she first accused him of assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman changing room in the 1990s in an excerpt of her book “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.” Then-President Trump infamously said he didn’t do it because Carroll was not his “type,” among other derogatory comments.

In September, Kaplan ruled that Trump was liable for defamation as the comments were substantially the same as post-presidency remarks jurors determined were defamatory the first time Carroll took him to trial in May. He was also found liable for sexual assault at that trial and ordered to pay Carroll $5 million.

“For the purposes of this trial, it has been determined already Mr. Trump did sexually (abuse) Ms. Carroll,” Judge Kaplan said Tuesday, prompting Trump to shake his head. The judge said it had also been definitively decided that Trump falsely accused Carroll of fabricating the incident when he was president in an effort to disparage her character.

After the jury was chosen, Kaplan repeated the key facts that had already been decided. He said they would need to solely decide whether Carroll sustained “more than nominal” damages as a result of Trump’s comments about her in June 2019, what the cost of that harm was, and whether he should be required to pay more damages as punishment.

The jury will not decide how much Carroll should be owed for the sexual assault itself.

“That already has been done,” Kaplan said.

Shawn Crowley, in her opening statement, told the jury that every single thing Trump said about Carroll when she first spoke out was an “outright lie.” And she said he did so from the most powerful perch possible — the White House.

“In the spring of 1996, Donald Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. He managed to get her alone in an empty department store one evening, and he sexually assaulted her. That’s a fact. As Judge Kaplan just instructed you, that fact has been proven, and a jury sitting in the exact seats where you’re sitting now found that it happened,” Crowley said.

“So, why are we here? We’re here because 25 years after Donald Trump sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll, in June of 2019, she came forward and spoke publicly about the assault for the first time. We’re here because when she did that, Donald Trump didn’t just deny the assault, he went much, much further. He denied ever meeting Ms. Carroll. He said he had no idea who she was. He accused her of lying and making up a story to make money and to advance some political conspiracies against her — and he threatened her. He said she should pay dearly. … Donald Trump was president when he made those statements, and he used the world’s biggest microphone to attack Ms. Carroll, to humiliate her, and to destroy her reputation.”

Crowley told jurors they would hear from Carroll on Wednesday about how Trump’s comments wrecked her reputation as a respected columnist and see comments from his emboldened supporters abusing her online and threatening to rape and kill her. She said the jury’s job is to make sure he doesn’t defame her again so Carroll can finally “live her life in peace.”

“In other words, how much money will it take to make him stop? Because he has not stopped,” Crowley said. “His attacks on Ms. Carroll have not stopped to this day — literally, to this day.”

The former president, wearing a navy blue suit and a bright red tie, took his seat at the defense table around 9:30 a.m., sitting less than 10 feet behind Carroll and her legal team. He left with his Secret Service entourage before Crowley’s opening. He wasn’t in court an hour when more defamatory remarks went up on his Truth Social account about Carroll, claiming she was trying to extort him and had fabricated the assault, among other highly disparaging comments.

He also trashed Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan as a “Clinton-appointed” judge “unable to see clearly because of his absolute hatred of Donald J. Trump (ME!).” It wasn’t clear who published the tweets. Trump is not supposed to have his phone inside the courthouse.

The case on trial, which was filed years before the one Trump lost last year, was bogged down incessantly by Trump’s appeals, arguing he couldn’t be sued for things he said when he was president. Carroll is seeking at least $10 million.

Judge Kaplan had little patience for Trump’s lawyers after he took the bench, and they objected to a nonexistent gag order and complained that they did not know who Carroll was calling as a witness. The judge pointed out they’d had the witness list for months and instructed them not to discuss the case in front of jurors, a standard directive.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba also complained about the judge’s refusal to push back the trial a week on account of the death of Trump’s mother-in-law. Kaplan said Sunday he would allow Trump to testify next week even if the parties have finished their cases.

The jurors chosen feature a high number of civically engaged New Yorkers, with almost all saying they voted in 2016 and 2020. Mostly everyone queried also said they’d heard about Trump’s cases in the news. Three people said from the outset that they couldn’t be fair and were excused. Trump appeared intently focused as Kaplan queried prospective jurors, turning around to face the gallery with his left arm draped over the back of his chair.

A pair of election deniers were booted from the pool, one of whom was among a handful to put their hand up when Kaplan asked if anyone felt “Mr. Trump is being treated unfairly by the court system of the United States.”

Trump’s hand also shot up.

“Well, you’re not in the jury box, but we know where you stand,” Kaplan quipped.

The trial is expected to last three to five days.

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