As expected, E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers rested their plaintiff’s case on Thursday in the civil trial of her claims that Donald Trump raped her in approximately the spring of 1996 then defamed her after she wrote about it in 2019. The trial was in recess today.
It remains highly likely that the defense will call no witnesses and that the nine-person jury will hear summations from the lawyers beginning first thing on Monday morning. The door remains open, however, for the former president to appear and testify, as he kinda sorta threatened to do while playing on a golf course in Ireland on Thursday.
I’m not holding my breath.
As we detailed yesterday, after his principal lawyer, Joe Tacopina, announced earlier in the week that Trump would not be attending the trial or testifying, and then announced that there would be no defense presentation of evidence, Trump went on a tirade over 3,000 miles away — he’s been in Scotland and Ireland this week breaking ground on a new golf course and playing rounds on others.
He ripped into his accuser, Carroll, maintaining as he previously has that her sexual-assault allegation is complete fiction. He also alleged that the presiding federal judge, Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, “is extremely hostile” to him. Thus, he inveighed, he was “choos[ing]” to go back to the U.S. to “confront” Carroll. But when asked pointedly whether he was going to attend the trial, Trump said only that he “probably” would before pivoting to what “disgrace” it all is.
This put Judge Kaplan in a bind. He has admonished Trump (through Tacopina) that it is “entirely inappropriate” for him to be speaking publicly about an ongoing jury trial, especially when he has the right to tell the jurors what he wants them to hear — in court, under oath, and subject to cross-examination.
Kaplan intimated that Trump could be held in contempt and accused of obstructing the proceedings if he didn’t knock it off. Kaplan has also been trying to move the trial to a conclusion consistent with what he told the jury would be its length, and thus he gave Tacopina a deadline by which Trump was to announce his intentions; Tacopina duly told Kaplan his client would not be testifying (or even attending the trial).
Kaplan is a smart guy. He knows that Trump is trying to bait him into a public dressing-down, a contempt citation, and/or an order that it is too late for the defendant to change his mind about testifying, which Trump would then fold into his public-relations effort to portray the trial as a travesty if the jury finds him liable.
That Trump’s outrage was performative is clear. Rather than respond angrily, the judge told Tacopina late Thursday that he was aware of reports about Trump’s statements, and the lawyer assured the court that he had spoken with his client before announcing that Trump would not testify; Tacopinia, moreover, said he had spoken with his client again on Thursday morning and that Trump was still opting not to testify.
Having made this record that what Trump was telling his lawyer was different from what he was telling the media overseas, Kaplan wisely gave Tacopina until 5 p.m. this coming Sunday if he wanted to make a motion to permit Trump’s testimony.
Assuming that deadline passes, Kaplan will consider the evidentiary phase of the trial complete and proceed to summations, as scheduled. If Trump squawks after that, it will be clear that he’s just trying to spin what has actually been his carefully considered decision not to attend or testify at the trial.
That Trump is engaged in gamesmanship does not mean his decision to refrain from testifying is a bad move. To the contrary, the video deposition he gave pretrial was sufficiently damaging to him that Carroll’s team played nearly an hour of it for the jury toward the close of their presentation. More testimony is not apt to be helpful.
Today, the court released portions of the deposition that were played for the jury and are thus part of the trial record. Trump was appropriately indignant about the rape allegation: He asserted that rape was one of the worst things someone could be accused of, and continued to be vehement in denying he’d done it. Common sense says a person accused of something heinous should not meekly deny it if he didn’t do it; Trump summoned up the outrage we would expect of a falsely accused person.
Alas, as usual, Trump is his own worst enemy. In initially denying Carroll’s allegations, he gratuitously added that she was “not my type.” In being asked about that statement in the deposition, he couldn’t help himself but added that Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge), is not his type either — in addition to being a “political operative” and a “disgrace.”
Let’s put aside that Kaplan is an openly gay woman who has been prominent in legal advocacy for LGBTQ rights (and who had the good sense, during the deposition, to let pass that Trump is not her type). While the former president’s slamming of Carroll and her lawyer in this manner may make his fans swoon, it will not be lost on the jury that if a person really thinks rape is the worst thing one can be accused of, “type” is irrelevant — is Trump saying that if Carroll were his type, the rape claim would be plausible?
And speaking of that, the deposition includes Trump’s embarrassing misidentification of Carroll, in an old photo with Trump, as his second wife, Marla Maples. If one were inclined to believe the former president’s “type” bluster, it is difficult to square his confusion of a woman he says is not his type with a woman he married. And, as the “type” bit is plainly intended to imply that Carroll was unattractive, the photo of the now-79-year-old laughing in the late eighties as she conversed with Trump (and their then-spouses looked on), demonstrates that, at the time she says the rape occurred, she was indeed an attractive woman and Trump had reason to know her.
I believe summations will begin as scheduled Monday morning but wouldn’t be surprised if we have some weekend theatrics.