With just two weeks to go before Donald Trump enters Round 2 of his civil rape trial against journalist E. Jean Carroll, the former president’s lawyers are grasping at straws—and getting repeatedly slapped down by an increasingly impatient federal judge.
Their latest ploy is an ill-fated attempt to keep a New York jury from seeing much of Trump’s damning deposition, the same videotape that showed the billionaire being his typically crass self. In it, he repeatedly insults a lawyer with sexist remarks, mistakenly identifies his sexual assault victim as his ex-wife, and even blurts out that stars like him get away with sexual harassment “unfortunately—or fortunately.”
But in trying this last-minute switcheroo, Trump’s attorneys are getting called out for mistakenly thinking the upcoming trial is another shot at rewriting history to clear Trump’s name, as opposed to what it is: a second lashing for running his mouth.
ADVERTISEMENT
Over the holiday weekend, a lawyer for Carroll asked a judge to reject the former president’s attempt to hit the reset button.
“Trump once again effectively seeks a do-over,” attorney Roberta A. Kaplan wrote in a court filing.
Carroll sued Trump twice, once over his very public denials from the White House in 2019 that a rape ever occurred, and again for a taunting written statement he made in 2022 after leaving office.
The second lawsuit went first. Trump ghosted his rape trial in New York City federal court last year, leaving his inadvisable remarks on tape to do the talking for him. It was a blunder that resulted in the jury quickly determining that he did indeed sexually abuse Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. The decision came with a $5 million verdict that punished Trump for forcing himself on her—and defaming her in the written statement.
But now that it’s already been legally determined that Trump had some kind of predatory sexual encounter with Carroll, the White House comments defamation case is proceeding on damages only. The jury will solely determine how much money Trump owes for misusing the presidential podium to essentially call his accuser a liar. The evidence will be the same, the issues will be narrow, and the trial could be over in a flash.
But Trump’s lawyers apparently think this is something else entirely.
In Sunday’s court filing, Carroll’s lawyer pointed out how Trump’s legal team keeps trying to block videotape clips—through objections called counter-designations—as if this were a fresh start.
“The jury in this case needs to decide only (i) the amount of damages to award in connection with Trump’s June 21 and 22 defamatory statements and (ii) Trump’s common law malice. Many of Trump’s counter-designations, by contrast, concern whether the underlying sexual assault occurred—an issue that has been conclusively resolved in Carroll’s favor,” Kaplan wrote.
As it currently stands, Trump lawyer, Michael Madaio, is objecting to 38 clips of Trump’s hours-long deposition that took place on Oct. 19, 2022, mostly on the grounds that they’re not relevant. He’s also trying to block the embarrassing deposition by claiming that it’s essentially useless, given that Trump is going to show up at trial anyway—that is, if he doesn’t flake out like last time.
Madaio’s court filing last month revealed that the defense team is still holding out some hope that jurors won't get to hear from two other women who say Trump forced himself on them years ago, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff. Both women testified the first time around.
Against all odds, Trump’s lawyers also insist it's still unclear “whether the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape is admissible at trial”—referring to the infamous tape where Trump boasted about grabbing women “by the pussy.”
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan (who says he isn’t related to Carroll’s lawyer despite the shared surname) hasn’t yet ruled on the issue. But he’s likely to view it as yet another Trump legal ploy to revive issues he already decided long ago, something that appears to keep annoying the judge.
Last week, the judge called out Trump’s lawyers for playing similar games on an entirely different issue: trying to call in a new defense expert at the very last minute and block testimony from a marketing professor who plans to say that Trump’s comments likely caused Carroll up to $12 million in “reputational repair.”
The judge derided that scheme as “nothing more than a veiled attempt to take a second [bite] at the apple.”
It wasn’t the first time that Judge Kaplan has accused Trump’s lawyers of bombarding him with legal requests that appear to be new—but are really just what he calls “a motion for reconsideration” in disguise.
All signs indicate that Trump’s team is still approaching the case hoping to call into question whether the sexual assault ever even happened. In yet another example, the former president’s attorneys objected last month to having potential jurors queried about the previous iteration of the case.
According to a court filing by Carroll’s lawyer, Trump’s team doesn’t want the judge to ask potential jurors the following question: “In this case, you will be instructed to accept as true certain facts relating to Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump, including that Mr. Trump defamed Ms. Carroll when he made statements denying that he had sexually assaulted her and accusing her of lying for political and financial purposes. That means that you cannot question those facts and must accept them as proven. Is there anyone who is unable or unwilling to follow that instruction?”
The judge hasn’t yet weighed in on that either. But he’ll have to do it soon. The federal trial is scheduled to start on Jan. 16, the day after Iowa holds its Republican presidential caucuses—the first primary election of 2024.
