Former US President Donald Trump left Trump Tower on Wednesday morning as he heads back to Manhattan court where rape accuser E. Jean Carroll was poised to testify against him for $10 million defamation case.
The Republican frontrunner flew back to New York late on Tuesday night after addressing a campaign rally along with biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in New Hampshire.
According to Daily Mail, some “mysterious red cuts” were seen on Trump’s hand.
On Tuesday, Trump said that his accuser had gained fame and money through “fabricated lies and political shenanigans” in the case.
“I am the only one injured by this attempted EXTORTION,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
Carroll testifies in court with Trump in attendance
Meanwhile, rape accuser Carroll testified in a New York court that Trump “shattered” her reputation by lying about sexually assaulting her and calling her a “wack job”.
“Donald Trump assaulted me and when I wrote about it he said it never happened. He lied and shattered my reputation,” she replied to her lawyer Roberta Kaplan who asked why she was in court as per NBC News.
Trump stared down Carroll as she expressed her desire to dissuade the former president “from telling lies about me”. He was even seen shaking his head, wincing and whispering to his attorney.
Carroll was sexually abused by 77-year-old former president in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s, according to a New York jury’s verdict last year. Carroll was even awarded $5 million in damages. The jury, however, maintained that the columnist hadn’t proven her claim that Trump raped her.
The remarks that Trump made about her during his presidency are the basis for the new trial.
Carroll says she’s facing online threats as Trump called her ‘liar’
Carroll further stated that she expected Trump to respond when excerpts from her book, which included a section regarding Trump’s assault, were published in New York Magazine in 2019.
She stated that she anticipated Trump would refute it and claim it was consensual, which the rape accuser said it was not.
In her testimony, she noted Trump’s allegations of her being a liar resulted in several online threats that “ended the world I had been living in.”
“To have the president of the United States, one of the most powerful persons on earth, call me a liar for three days and say it 26 times — I counted them. It ended the world I had been living in, and I lived in a new world,” Carroll said.
Citing the attacks she faced on Twitter and Facebook with thousands of messages calling her a ‘liar’ and ‘ugly’, Carroll said: “It was a new world, I left the world of fact and was living in a new universe and it happened instantaneously. … Much of the wording people used repeated his words.”
‘Sit down’: Judge snaps at Donald Trump’s lawyer
Alina Habba, the attorney for Trump, and Judge Lewis Kaplan got into a heated argument when she insisted that the trial should be postponed so that the former president could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral. The judge instructed Habba to “sit down”, despite her persistent requests.
Later, Carroll’s attorney Shawn Crowley complained that Trump has been “loudly saying things” throughout the hearing in front of the jurors.
Crowley alleged to the judge while jury was out for a break, Trump couldn’t stop saying that Carroll’s statements were “false” and also grousing that “she now seems to have finally gotten her memory back.”
Judge instructs Trump ‘to keep his voice down’
Judge Kaplan then asked Trump “to keep his voice down” after he denounced Carroll’s testimony as false within earshot of jurors.
“I’m going to ask that Mr. Trump take special care to keep his voice down when conferring with counsel so that the jury does not overhear,” the judge said.
Trump, who won the Iowa caucuses on Monday, claims that he never met Carroll and nothing happened between them.
Carroll is currently asking for millions more in punitive damages in addition to $10 million in compensatory damages.
Vikram Sharma is a globe-trotting journalist with a global perspective on international events. His articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing insights into the world’s most pressing challenges.
