By Lauren del Valle, Kara Scannell, Allison Morrow and Dan Berman, CNN
From CNN's Allison Morrow
Robbie Myers, who is set to testify on Thursday when the trial resumes, was E. Jean Carroll’s longtime boss at Elle magazine.
Myers is a fixture in New York media, having begun her career at Rolling Stone in the 1980s, followed by positions at Interview, where she worked for Andy Warhol, Seventeen and InStyle, according to a 2017 New York Times profile.
She became the editor-in-chief of Elle in 2000, and ran the magazine until 2017.
E. Jean Carroll and former President Donald Trump have both arrived at the federal courthouse in Manhattan for the resumption of the civil defamation trial.
This is the first day back in court since it was adjourned Monday after a juror went home sick.
From CNN's Kara Scannell
E. Jean Carroll’s civil defamation trial against Donald Trump will resume today at 9:30 a.m. ET.
The former president is expected to be present at court. His attorneys said in court Monday he wants to testify, but that has still not been confirmed.
On Monday, the judge adjourned the trial due to a sick juror. The jury has not heard proceedings since last Thursday.
More about the case: Carroll, a former magazine columnist, alleged Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim. In a separate trial last year, a civil jury found Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and defamed her in 2022 statements, and the judge previously ruled that verdict would carry over to this defamation trial.
From CNN's Jeremy Herb, Lauren del Valle and Kara Scannell
E. Jean Carroll has to prove that she is entitled to damages from Donald Trump for defamation by a preponderance of the evidence, a standard used in civil cases that’s lower than what’s required in criminal trials.
That evidence standard was used in Carroll’s civil defamation case last year, in which a jury found that Carroll proved Trump had sexually abused and defamed her by a preponderance of the evidence, but that she did not prove Trump had raped her, as that crime is narrowly defined by New York’s criminal laws. Trump has appealed the verdict.
Carroll’s case last year, in which she was awarded $5 million for battery and defamation, focused on comments Trump made about Carroll in 2022. The current case is about Trump’s statements when he was president in 2019. Carroll is seeking over $10 million in damages.
After the jury was sworn in, Judge Lewis Kaplan compared the preponderance standard in the case to a scale.
“What a preponderance of the evidence means is that the plaintiff has to produce evidence which, considered in light of all of the facts, leads you to believe that what the plaintiff claims is more likely correct or true than not,” Kaplan said.
“To put it differently, if you were to put the plaintiff’s and the defendant’s evidence on opposite sides of metaphorical scales, the plaintiff has the burden to make the scales tip, even if only slightly, in the plaintiff’s favor,” the judge continued. “If they tip slightly for the plaintiff or heavily for the plaintiff, then the plaintiff has prevailed by a preponderance of the evidence. If they tip even slightly for the defendant or heavily for the defendant, then the defendant prevails on that issue.”
Carroll testified at the trial last week that Trump’s statements after she went public about his allegedly having sexually assaulted her shattered her reputation and led to an onslaught of threatening messages.
Keep reading here about Carroll's case against Trump.
From CNN's Jeremy Herb, Lauren del Valle and Kara Scannell
The trial that will decide how much money in damages Donald Trump must pay E. Jean Carroll resumes later this morning.
Carroll in her testimony last week recounted how Trump’s 2019 statements about her led to threatening messages and upended her sense of safety.
The attacks started “instantaneously,” Carroll said as she described several safety precautions she’s taken out of fear due to the threatening messages, including hiring security at both trials and keeping a gun at her bedside. “I bought bullets for the gun I had inherited from my father,” Carroll said.
Carroll’s voice broke as she described another violent message she received after the trial last year.
“When a woman sees the words, we can’t help but think of the image. And so, he wants me to stick a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger,” she said, reading the email. “And I imagine that many of us now can picture that.”
She said she was attacked on Twitter, Facebook, on new blogs and messages. “As I said, it was a new world. I had left the world of facts, a lovely world, and I was living in a new universe,” she said.
During cross-examination, Carroll testified there were about five hours between when her 2019 story published and when Trump made a statement denying the allegations, in response to questioning from Trump’s attorney Alina Habba. Carroll confirmed she received harassing social media messages before Trump made any statements.
Habba also pressed Carroll about deleting or removing the threatening messages when she received them, making a motion for a mistrial because of the deleted messages, which was promptly denied by Judge Lewis Kaplan. Habba argued in her opening statement last week that Carroll’s story fueled the harassment, not Trump’s denials.
Robbie Myers, who is set to testify on Thursday when the trial resumes, was E. Jean Carroll’s longtime boss at Elle magazine.
Myers is a fixture in New York media, having begun her career at Rolling Stone in the 1980s, followed by positions at Interview, where she worked for Andy Warhol, Seventeen and InStyle, according to a 2017 New York Times profile.
She became the editor-in-chief of Elle in 2000, and ran the magazine until 2017.
E. Jean Carroll and former President Donald Trump have both arrived at the federal courthouse in Manhattan for the resumption of the civil defamation trial.
This is the first day back in court since it was adjourned Monday after a juror went home sick.
E. Jean Carroll’s civil defamation trial against Donald Trump will resume today at 9:30 a.m. ET.
The former president is expected to be present at court. His attorneys said in court Monday he wants to testify, but that has still not been confirmed.
On Monday, the judge adjourned the trial due to a sick juror. The jury has not heard proceedings since last Thursday.
More about the case: Carroll, a former magazine columnist, alleged Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim. In a separate trial last year, a civil jury found Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and defamed her in 2022 statements, and the judge previously ruled that verdict would carry over to this defamation trial.
E. Jean Carroll has to prove that she is entitled to damages from Donald Trump for defamation by a preponderance of the evidence, a standard used in civil cases that’s lower than what’s required in criminal trials.
That evidence standard was used in Carroll’s civil defamation case last year, in which a jury found that Carroll proved Trump had sexually abused and defamed her by a preponderance of the evidence, but that she did not prove Trump had raped her, as that crime is narrowly defined by New York’s criminal laws. Trump has appealed the verdict.
Carroll’s case last year, in which she was awarded $5 million for battery and defamation, focused on comments Trump made about Carroll in 2022. The current case is about Trump’s statements when he was president in 2019. Carroll is seeking over $10 million in damages.
After the jury was sworn in, Judge Lewis Kaplan compared the preponderance standard in the case to a scale.
“What a preponderance of the evidence means is that the plaintiff has to produce evidence which, considered in light of all of the facts, leads you to believe that what the plaintiff claims is more likely correct or true than not,” Kaplan said.
“To put it differently, if you were to put the plaintiff’s and the defendant’s evidence on opposite sides of metaphorical scales, the plaintiff has the burden to make the scales tip, even if only slightly, in the plaintiff’s favor,” the judge continued. “If they tip slightly for the plaintiff or heavily for the plaintiff, then the plaintiff has prevailed by a preponderance of the evidence. If they tip even slightly for the defendant or heavily for the defendant, then the defendant prevails on that issue.”
Carroll testified at the trial last week that Trump’s statements after she went public about his allegedly having sexually assaulted her shattered her reputation and led to an onslaught of threatening messages.
Keep reading here about Carroll's case against Trump.
The trial that will decide how much money in damages Donald Trump must pay E. Jean Carroll resumes later this morning.
Carroll in her testimony last week recounted how Trump’s 2019 statements about her led to threatening messages and upended her sense of safety.
The attacks started “instantaneously,” Carroll said as she described several safety precautions she’s taken out of fear due to the threatening messages, including hiring security at both trials and keeping a gun at her bedside. “I bought bullets for the gun I had inherited from my father,” Carroll said.
Carroll’s voice broke as she described another violent message she received after the trial last year.
“When a woman sees the words, we can’t help but think of the image. And so, he wants me to stick a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger,” she said, reading the email. “And I imagine that many of us now can picture that.”
She said she was attacked on Twitter, Facebook, on new blogs and messages. “As I said, it was a new world. I had left the world of facts, a lovely world, and I was living in a new universe,” she said.
During cross-examination, Carroll testified there were about five hours between when her 2019 story published and when Trump made a statement denying the allegations, in response to questioning from Trump’s attorney Alina Habba. Carroll confirmed she received harassing social media messages before Trump made any statements.
Habba also pressed Carroll about deleting or removing the threatening messages when she received them, making a motion for a mistrial because of the deleted messages, which was promptly denied by Judge Lewis Kaplan. Habba argued in her opening statement last week that Carroll’s story fueled the harassment, not Trump’s denials.
