UPDATE (May 9, 2023, 3:31 p.m. ET): A jury on Tuesday found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. The jury awarded her $5 million in damages.
Donald Trump could have testified in his own defense at E. Jean Carroll’s civil rape and defamation trial against him. Instead, the former president didn’t even show up to court. And as the jury begins deliberations on Tuesday, Trump lied to his followers on Truth Social that he wasn’t “allowed to speak or defend” himself.
In fact, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who’s presiding over the trial in the Southern District of New York, specifically left open the possibility for Trump to testify up to the last minute. Trump’s attorney said Thursday that the former president had waived his right to do so. And after Trump vowed later that day to “confront” Carroll’s allegations, Kaplan gave him until Sunday to tell the court whether he intended to testify. But the 2024 Republican candidate let that deadline pass, forgoing the opportunity to contest Carroll’s claim that he raped her in the mid-1990s and then lied about it.
Indeed, Trump whined in his social media post on Tuesday that he was falsely accused. But he didn’t explain why he opted not to address the supposedly false accusation in the proper forum to do so: court.
One cannot imagine that Judge Kaplan, or Trump's attorney Joe Tacopina, will be happy about this.
Currently on Truth Social, just before the jury gets the case.
(Note: Trump was repeatedly "allowed to speak and defend" himself — and chose not to testify.) pic.twitter.com/Kvxx1YYRa4Recommended
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) May 9, 2023
It’s true, of course, that Kaplan during the trial admonished what he deemed Trump’s inappropriate social media posts about the case. But that didn’t stop Trump from defending himself, either. Rather, it served to underscore that the parameters of Trump’s conduct, like any other party’s behavior in a legal proceeding, are dictated by the judge.
No doubt, Trump is nervous as he approaches even the prospect of accountability in this case, which is only part of his busy legal docket.
But whatever the outcome, the truth is that Trump could have faced his accuser. He chose not to.
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Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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