Trump rejects last likelihood to testify at New York civil trial

NEW YORK (AP) — Previous President Donald Trump turned down his previous probability Sunday to testify at a civil demo the place a longtime guidance columnist has accused him of raping her in a luxury section store dressing place in 1996.

Trump, a Republican applicant for president in 2024, was presented till 5 p.m. Sunday by U.S. District Decide Lewis A. Kaplan to file a ask for to testify. Very little was filed.

It was not a surprise. Trump has not proven up when in the course of the two-week Manhattan demo the place author E. Jean Carroll testified for numerous times, repeating claims she initial built publicly in a 2019 memoir. She is looking for compensatory and punitive damages totaling thousands and thousands of pounds.

The jury has also viewed prolonged excerpts from an October videotaped deposition in which Trump vehemently denied raping Carroll or at any time genuinely realizing her.

Without Trump’s testimony, attorneys have been scheduled to make closing arguments Monday, with deliberations likely to begin on Tuesday.

After prosecutors rested their case Thursday, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina instantly rested the protection scenario as properly without calling any witnesses. He did not ask for additional time for Trump to determine to testify. Tacopina declined in an e mail to comment right after the deadline handed Sunday.

On Thursday, Kaplan had given Trump further time to adjust his head and ask for to testify, nevertheless the choose did not assure he would grant these a ask for to reopen the protection scenario so Trump could choose the stand.

At the time, Kaplan mentioned that he’d read about information studies Thursday in which Trump told reporters when browsing his golfing course in Doonbeg, Ireland, that he would “probably attend” the demo. Trump also criticized Kaplan, a Invoice Clinton appointee, as an “extremely hostile” and “rough judge” who “doesn’t like me very substantially.”

On the witness stand, Carroll, 79, testified that Trump, 76, raped her in spring 1996 right after they fulfilled at the entrance of the midtown Manhattan division retailer Bergdorf Goodman.

Tale proceeds

She stated the face started as a entertaining and flirtatious outing as Trump coaxed her into supporting him shop for a gift for a further woman. She said they finished up in the store’s desolate lingerie portion, where they teased every single other to test on a see-by way of bodysuit.

As Carroll recalled it, laughter accompanied them into a dressing place where by Trump grew to become violent, slamming her up versus a wall, pulling apart her tights and raping her ahead of she kneed him and fled the retail store.

In his deposition, Trump claimed Carroll created it up. He known as it “a false, disgusting lie” sent by a “nut job” who was striving to stoke sales of her book.

He also recurring responses he manufactured in statements that she was not his “type.”

“She’s not my kind and which is 100% accurate,” he said.

And he repeated his promises in a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which he bragged that gentlemen who are stars can seize women of all ages by the genitals without having asking.

“Historically that is true with stars,” he stated.

Carroll sued Trump in November, minutes immediately after New York point out enacted a legislation allowing grownup sexual assault victims to sue other individuals even if the attacks happened a long time earlier.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote a letter to the judge Sunday to complain that Trump nevertheless has not taken off April 26 posts on his social media network in which he identified as Carroll’s allegations “a built up Scam.” And she observed that he repeated disparaging remarks about the trial a few times back in Ireland.

After the April 26 postings on Truth Social, Judge Kaplan, who is not associated to Carroll’s lawyer, explained Trump’s feedback were being “highly inappropriate” and expressed worry that Trump was seeking to talk to the jury “about stuff that has no small business remaining spoken about.”

The Connected Press typically does not identify persons who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has performed.