Trump gears up to take the stand as E. Jean Carroll’s NYC defamation case continues

Another set of New Yorkers heard evidence against Donald Trump last week as he once again faced off in court with E. Jean Carroll, the woman he sexually assaulted and slandered as a liar — and the jury might still hear from the former president himself.

Trump, who is expected to return to Manhattan Federal Court on Monday as Carroll’s case against him enters its second week, plans to take the stand, where he won’t be permitted to deny committing sex crimes or spreading lies about her.

The longtime advice columnist proved to a jury last year that Trump violently attacked her on an empty floor at Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Ave. in 1996 and slandered her as a “complete con job” on Truth Social in October 2022, winning $5 million in damages.

Judge Lewis Kaplan soon after decided Trump was also liable for defamation for remarks he made about the writer while he was still in the White House — forming the basis of Carroll’s other lawsuit against him, which Trump for years sought to dodge by arguing presidents can’t be sued.

In her Tuesday opening argument, Carroll’s attorney, Shawn Crowley, told jurors their only job would be to decide what Trump owes an 80-year-old woman in daily fear for her life after he dragged her name through the mud from “the most famous platform on earth.”

“How much money he should pay — it will take — to get him to stop defaming her, so that Ms. Carroll can maybe, finally, live her life in peace,” Crowley said.

The arrival of the case that took years to make it to trial didn’t bring a moment of solace to Carroll, with the ex-president declining to hold his fire the two days he was in court.

Not 30 minutes into jury selection, a string of posts published to Trump’s Truth Social account while he was inside the lower Manhattan courthouse repeated every one of his defamatory statements about the former Elle columnist to his 6.5 million followers — that she was a fame-hungry and mentally unstable liar who was extorting him in conjunction with the Democrats — and denigrated the “Trump-hating” veteran jurist on the bench.

By Wednesday, the GOP front-runner in the race for the White House was defaming Carroll in front of the jury.

“It is a witch hunt,” Trump said from his seat while Carroll was on the stand, loud enough to be heard by jurors and her legal team, who notified the judge. “It really is a con job.”

Having earlier that morning asked Trump to communicate quietly with his lawyers, Judge Kaplan then threatened to expel him from the trial, telling him, “You’re probably very eager for me to do that.”

“I would love it,” Trump replied.

“I know you would,” Kaplan said. “You just can’t control yourself in these circumstances, apparently.”

During her two days on the stand, Carroll recounted the torrent of vitriolic abuse and death threats she received online after then-President Trump first put a target on her back in June 2019, leaving her in a constant state of paranoia and sleeping with a loaded gun.

Describing the steps she takes to be constantly “hyper alert,” Carroll told the court how she hired private security when she could afford it and that a pill bull guards the grounds of the house where she lives alone upstate.

The elderly writer said Trump’s verbal attacks “ended the world” she’d been living in and ushered her into a dark and dangerous new reality where even running errands required a contingency plan.

“Choosing a parking place, looking to see who’s around, looking to see if I should open the car door, should I drive on, doing the errand. And then, on the way home, making sure nobody is following me,” she testified Wednesday.

“If a car turns into my road behind me, I never stop at my house. I drive to the end of it, to the road.”

On Thursday, Northwestern University sociologist Ashlee Humphreys told the jury that an analysis of the two June 2019 statements central to Carrol’s defamation suit determined they influenced the minds of as many as 25 million people — and were viewed as many as 104 million times.

Humphreys estimated it would cost up to $12.1 million to repair the damage Trump’s missives did to the veteran columnist’s reputation, taking her from “a sassy advice columnist” to a liar with “a political agenda and working with the Democratic party.” The jury could decide Trump owes significantly more in punitive damages.

If Trump follows through on his plans to testify, Carroll’s lawyers are concerned he’ll break the rules, as he can’t defend himself against any of the proven sex abuse and defamation allegations. Crowley noted last week that he can’t say he can’t afford to pay Carroll, either, having boasted about being a billionaire at his recent $370 million fraud trial across the street, in which he’s still awaiting a verdict on six claims.

Carroll’s lawyers, in a weekend filing, said they would no longer call two women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct to the stand — or play the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which he’s heard bragging about grabbing women “by the p—y” — to narrow their case.

They again expressed concern Trump will turn his testimony into a campaign event and said they plan to introduce as evidence remarks he’s made about Carroll over the past week.

“These statements, in which Defendant repeats his false claim that he ‘never heard of [Ms. Carroll], never touched her, had nothing to do with her,’ and, as noted above, promises to repeat his lies ‘a thousand times,'” Carroll’s attorneys wrote. “Such statements are of course relevant to the issue of punitive damages, as they illustrate that Defendant has no intention of ceasing his defamation campaign against Ms. Carroll, even in the face of judicial proceedings in which his liability for defaming her is settled.”

Trump’s lawyers — who were schooled countless times by the no-nonsense judge last week on how to enter evidence, make objections, and question witnesses — have sought to convince jurors that Carroll brought the blowback on herself by revealing her allegations against Trump in a book excerpt published by New York magazine.

Trump attorney Alina Habba pointed to a handful of tweets disbelieving Carroll in the hours between the magazine story going live and Trump reacting to it with venom. In her opening, she told jurors Carroll was “now more famous than she has ever been in her life, and loved and respected by many, which was her goal.”

On cross-examination, Carroll told Habba she didn’t see it that way.

“I’m more well-known — and hated by a lot more people.”

Trump’s current trial kicked off in tandem with the presidential primary season, starting a day after his landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses. The 77-year-old is facing 91 felonies in four criminal matters and a slew of lawsuits as his poll numbers continue to climb.