Donald Trump abruptly exited a New York courtroom during closing arguments in a damages trial related to a sexual abuse case last Friday.
Last year, a jury determined Trump’s liability for sexually abusing E Jean Carroll and defaming her.
The ongoing trial specifically addresses the amount of damages the former president will be required to pay for harming Ms. Carroll’s reputation.
Trump left the courtroom as Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, urged the jury to hold him accountable for consistently lying about her client and damaging her standing as a reputable journalist.
“We all have to follow the law,” Ms Kaplan said. “Donald Trump, however, acts as if these rules and laws just don’t apply to him.”
District Judge Lewis Kaplan noted that after Donald Trump left the courtroom, he returned when his lawyer, Alina Habba, began her closing argument.
The judge objected twice during the argument, first when Habba denied the sexual assault and then when she claimed E. Jean Carroll’s account had “more holes than Swiss cheese.”
E. Jean Carroll is seeking a minimum of $10 million in compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages over Trump’s 2019 denials of her rape allegations.
The jury, bound by a previous verdict from May 2023 that found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, now only needs to determine the extent of damages for harming Carroll’s reputation and whether punitive damages are warranted to prevent further defamation.
Despite the earlier verdict, Trump has continued to attack Carroll during the current trial, dismissing it as a “witch hunt” and a “con job,” while maintaining he did not know her in the mid-1990s.
“This trial is about getting him to stop, once and for all,” Ms Carroll’s lawyer said on Friday.
Trump, the leading contender for the Republican nomination in the upcoming U.S. election, has been present throughout the trial, except for missing the opening statements due to a prior campaign event.
He aims to reclaim the presidency in November, setting up a probable face-off with Democrat Joe Biden, who defeated him in 2020.
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