Circumspect Donald Trump Testifies For Mere Minutes In E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case Over Rape; Plaintiff Seeks $12M+ From Ex-POTUS

deadline.com:

With just under five minutes of surprisingly reserved testimony from Donald Trump just now, the defense has rested its case in the defamation damages trial against the former president by E.

Jean Carroll. Taking the stand as promised, Trump was usually circumspect in his responses to his lawyer on Thursday. “No, I just wanted to defend myself, my family and frankly, the presidency,” the much indicted ex-president responded to attorney Alina Habba’s question of “did you ever instruct anyone to hurt Ms.

Carroll in your statements” in 2019. Earlier, with former Elle columnist Carroll sitting just a few feet away, Trump stated “Yes I did,” when asked by Habba if he thought Carroll’s sexual assault claims were false.  “She said something that I considered a false accusation — totally false.” Having put some pretty strict guardrails in place for Trump before the jury was brought back in to hear his testimony today, New York state Judge Lewis Kaplan immediately jumped in to tell the court that “everything after ‘yes I did’ is stricken.” Sticking to the judge’s guidelines, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan got in one question of cross-examination of Trump. “Is this the first trial that you have attended involving you and E.

Jean Carroll?” she asked, Trump replied “Yes.” Going into closing arguments tomorrow, it is obvious that attorney Kaplan wanted the jury to know that Trump never even bothered to show up even once for Carroll’s sexual assault trial against him last year.