Columnist E. Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial against former President Donald Trump got underway Tuesday, just hours after GOP voters brushed off the ex-president’s legal woes and delivered him a major victory in Iowa’s presidential caucuses.
Mr. Trump watched from a federal courtroom in Manhattan as Judge Lewis A. Kaplan and lawyers empaneled a jury for the trial, which will begin hearing testimony Wednesday and last three to five days.
Nine jurors will decide whether Ms. Carroll, who says Mr. Trump raped her in a department store in 1996, is entitled to new damages because of comments he made as president in 2019.
A previous jury awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million after finding Mr. Trump liable for sex abuse and defamation claims related to Ms. Carroll’s allegations and the former president’s comments from 2022.
The court said the liability finding from the first trial would carry over to the second trial, so jurors need to only determine how much Mr. Trump must pay.
For purposes of the new trial, it had already been determined that Mr. Trump “did sexually assault Ms. Carroll,” Judge Kaplan said, prompting Mr. Trump to shake his head.
The former president, 77, lashed out at Ms. Carroll, 80, ahead of Tuesday’s session.
“I had no idea who this woman was. She wrote nonsense about me in her failed book, the press asked me if it was true, I said NO, and so it began — A totally fabricated story with another Trump hating Judge,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Our legal system is TERRIBLE!!!”
After his courthouse appearance, Mr. Trump planned to head to New Hampshire ahead of its Jan. 23 primary.
Mr. Trump did not attend the first trial versus Ms. Carroll and was not required to attend this one, though he is using courtroom proceedings to draw media attention away from his GOP presidential rivals.
Mr. Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, asked the judge to suspend proceedings on Thursday so Mr. Trump could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral without missing court.
The judge denied the request, saying the only accommodation he would make is what he announced in an order over the weekend, which is that Mr. Trump can testify on Monday, even if the trial is otherwise finished by Thursday.
The trial is the latest round in Mr. Trump’s legal saga as he balances the courtroom and campaign.
He’s awaiting a judgment in a separate New York lawsuit that alleged his real estate company submitted false financial documents to gain favorable terms on loans and insurance.
He faces four criminal trials this year, including two related to his challenge to what he calls a rigged 2020 presidential election.
A trial in Florida will determine whether Mr. Trump broke the law by taking government records to his Mar-a-Lago estate and thwarting archivists who wanted them back.
And a New York indictment accused him of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels and two other people ahead of the 2016 election.
Ms. Daniels, in a podcast released Sunday, said she planned to take the stand in the trial scheduled to start March 25.
“Things have been next-level crazy since I am set to testify in, at this point in time, March — obviously, that can change any moment in the hush-money case,” said Ms. Daniels.
None of Mr. Trump’s legal woes seemed to matter to Republican voters in Iowa, who gave him a resounding victory in the caucuses that kicked off the 2024 nomination race.
Mr. Trump won 51% of the vote, against 21% for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and 19% for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Ms. Haley says she will do better in the New Hampshire primary.
“We can’t continue to be distracted, we can’t continue to be in chaos,” Ms. Haley told CNN, referring to Mr. Trump and his legal woes.
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has suggested he may testify at the second Carroll trial.
“I’m going to go to it and I’m going to explain I don’t know who the hell she is,” he recently told reporters on the campaign trail.
Because the trial is supposed to focus only on how much Mr. Trump owes Ms. Carroll, the judge has warned him and his lawyers that they can’t say things to jurors that he has said on the campaign trail or elsewhere, such as claiming she lied about him to promote her memoir.
Judge Kaplan also banned the Trump team from saying anything about Ms. Carroll’s “past romantic relationships, sexual disposition and prior sexual experiences,” from suggesting Mr. Trump didn’t sexually abuse Ms. Carroll or from implying she was motivated by “a political agenda, financial interests, mental illness or otherwise.”
• This story is based in part on wire service reports.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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