Judge blocks Trump lawyers from arguing over columnist's rape claim at upcoming defamation trial

NEW YORK — A judge said late Saturday that former President Donald Trump's lawyers cannot present legal arguments to a jury assessing damages in a defamation trial based on a jury's conclusion last year that he did not rape a columnist in the mid-1990s.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan made the decision in an order ahead of a Jan. 16 trial to determine defamation damages against Trump, after a jury concluded that Trump sexually assaulted columnist E. Jean Carroll but found there was insufficient evidence was to conclude that he raped her.

Speaking in Iowa on Saturday as the Republican presidential candidate ahead of the Jan. 15 primary, Trump criticized the judge as a “radical Democrat” and mocked E. Jean Carroll for not shouting when she was attacked. “It was all made up,” he said.

Carroll, 80, won a $5 million award last May from a jury that concluded Trump sexually assaulted her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996 and defamed her in 2022.

Trump was not present at the trial in Manhattan, where Carroll testified that a chance encounter at a Bergdorf Goodman store across the street from Trump Tower was flirty and fun until he slammed her against a wall in a dressing room and sexually assaulted her. Trump has strongly denied this.

In this month's trial, a jury will consider whether damages should be assessed against Trump for comments he made after last year's ruling and in 2019 while he was president after Carroll first spoke publicly about her claims amid the 1990s in a memoir.

Carroll's lawyers had asked the judge to issue the order, saying Trump's lawyers should not confuse jurors this month about last year's verdict by trying to argue that the jury shouldn't accept Carroll's claim believed.

They said the jury's findings reflected the conclusion that Trump forcibly and without consent digitally penetrated Carroll's vagina, which is not rape under New York state law but is rape in other jurisdictions.

Carroll's lawyers said the “stab of the defamation was Mr. Trump's claims that Ms. Carroll's sexual abuse allegation was a completely untruthful fabrication and that there were improper or even nefarious reasons behind it.”

A lawyer for Trump did not immediately return a message Saturday.

At trial, Carroll is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and significantly more in unspecified punitive damages. She will testify and Trump is listed as a witness. The trial is expected to last about a week.

Meanwhile, Trump has pleaded not guilty to four criminal charges, two of which accuse him of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, as well as a case involving classified documents and allegations that he helped arrange a payout to porn actor Stormy. Daniels to silence her before the 2016 presidential election.