Former President Donald Trump on Sunday declined a last chance to testify in a civil trial involving the longtime advice columnist He is accused of rape In 1996 in a luxury department store dressing room.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan gave Trump, the Republican presidential candidate in 2024, until 5 p.m. Sunday to request him to testify. Nothing has been filed.
It was not a surprise. During this time, Trump never met A two-week Manhattan trial Where the author e. Gene Carroll testified over several days, repeating a claim he first made publicly in a 2019 memoir. He is seeking compensatory and punitive damages totaling millions of dollars.
The jury witnessed a lengthy excerpt Oct. Videotape deposition While Trump has vehemently denied raping Carroll or even knowing her.
Without Trump testifying, lawyers were scheduled to make closing arguments on Monday, with deliberations likely to begin on Tuesday.
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After the plaintiffs rested their case on Thursday, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina immediately rested the defense’s case as well without calling any witnesses. He did not request additional time for Trump to decide whether to testify. Tacopina declined to comment in an email after deadline on Sunday.
On Thursday, Kaplan gave Trump additional time to change his mind and request to testify, though the judge did not promise that he would grant a request to reopen the defense case so Trump could take the stand.
At the time, Kaplan noted that he had heard news reports Thursday that Trump had told reporters while visiting his golf course in Dunbeg, Ireland, that he would “probably” attend the trial. Trump criticized Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, as “very hostile” and a “rough judge” who “doesn’t like me very much.”
On the witness stand, Carroll, 79, testified that Trump, 76, raped her in the spring of 1996 after they met in the entrance of the midtown Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman.
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She said the encounter began as a fun and flirtatious outing when Trump persuaded her to help him shop for a gift for another woman. She said they ended up in the store’s secluded underwear section, where they tried on each other’s bodysuits.
As Carol recalled it, Hussey accompanied them to a dressing room where Trump became violent, slamming her against a wall, pulling aside her tights and raping her before kneeling and fleeing the store.
In his deposition, Trump said Carroll made it up. He called it a “lie, a damn lie” delivered by a “nut job” who was trying to stock his book sales.
She also reiterated comments she made in the statement that he was not her “type”.
“He’s not my type and that’s 100% true,” she said.
And he repeated his claim in a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which he bragged that men who are celebrities can grab women genitally without asking.
“Historically that’s been true of stars,” he said.
Carroll sued Trump in November, minutes after New York state passed a law allowing adult sexual assault victims to sue others, even if the assault happened decades ago.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote a letter to the judge on Sunday complaining that Trump still hasn’t removed the April 26 posts on his social media network in which he called Carroll’s allegations “a manufactured scam.” And he noted that he had repeated disparaging comments about the trial in Ireland three days earlier.
After the April 26 posting on Truth Social, Judge Kaplan, who is not related to Carroll’s lawyer, said Trump’s comments were “grossly inappropriate” and expressed concern that Trump was trying to talk to the jury about “things they have no business talking about.”
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they were sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll did.
Donald Trump accused of sexual misconduct
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