A federal judge effectively neutered most of Donald Trump’s defenses in his upcoming defamation trial.
The former president’s attorneys had been preparing for his second defamation trial involving journalist E. Jean Carroll as if the first one never happened in hopes of clearing his name after a jury found him liable for sexual assault, but U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a new order severely limiting the parameters of this case, reported The Daily Beast.
“The material facts concerning the alleged sexual assault already have been determined, and this trial will not be a ‘do over’ of the previous trial,” Kaplan wrote in a 27-page order.
The jury in this trial will determine how much to penalize Trump for defaming Carroll while serving as president, and the judge will allow them to hear damning evidence of his misogyny in the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording and a video deposition where he reiterates that celebrities like himself can get away with sexual assault “unfortunately or fortunately.”
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The previous trial covered Trump’s defamatory denials of Carroll’s allegations after he left office, and a jury awarded the writer $5 million in damages, but the trial that begins next week will deal with denials he made in the White House, and the judge ordered him to remain silent on almost everything he had planned to say in court.
“Mr. Trump and his counsel are precluded, in the presence of the jury, from claiming that Mr. Trump did not sexually abuse (‘rape’) Ms. Carroll, that he did not make his… 2019 statements concerning Ms. Carroll with actual malice… or that Ms. Carroll fabricated her account,” Kaplan wrote.
The judge won’t even allow Trump to say he did not believe Carroll was telling the truth about their encounter in the 1990s at a New York City department store, and the judge won’t allow Trump to discuss DNA evidence after he failed to provide that in a timely manner the first time around, and his attorneys will not be permitted to mention Carroll’s past romantic relationships or suggest she’s engaged in a political attack on the former president.
“That means Trump’s big claims that he plans to finally speak up and testify at this trial — after notably ghosting the first one — might amount to nothing but grandstanding,” wrote Daily Beast correspondent Jose Pagliery. “The calculation has flipped, and Trump potentially stands much more to lose by showing up now that he’ll be effectively wearing a courtroom muzzle.”
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