Former President Donald Trump referred to the various judges presiding over his cases as “animals,” accusing the judge overseeing a trial beginning this week of denying his request to delay the case so he could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral, though the judge had given Trump more time for the case.
Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally at Simpson College on January 14, ... [+]
“These are animals,” Trump said of the judges overseeing his various legal cases, making a specific reference to Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing his writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him.
Kaplan on Friday denied Trump’s request to delay the trial, set to begin Tuesday, for a week so that he could attend the funeral for his mother-in-law, Amalija Knavs, in Florida on Thursday.
But Trump is not required to attend the trial, which is likely to conclude by the end of the week, and the judge did offer Trump to extend the trial an extra day if Trump wanted to testify.
Trump claimed Kaplan and other unspecified judges overseeing his cases are “bad people” and “radical left lunatics,” calling it a “disgrace” that Kaplan did not adhere to his request.
Kaplan noted in a memo Sunday that Trump claimed in his request to delay the trial that he would be traveling on Wednesday to Florida ahead of the funeral—though he has scheduled a campaign event in New Hampshire that day.
A civil jury determined in May Carroll was telling the truth when she accused Trump of sexually abusing her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s, awarding her $5 million in damages. Carroll later sued Trump for defamation for falsely claiming she lied about the incident, and Kaplan ruled in her favor in September. Next week’s trial will decide how much he owes in damages in that case. She is seeking $10 million.
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Trump called Kaplan a “terrible, biased, irrationally angry Clinton-appointed judge” in a Truth Social post on Saturday, reiterating his claims that he does not know Carroll and has never met her before.