Trump lands in NYC to face another court battle TODAY: Ex-President plans to address jury deciding how much more he should pay E. Jean Carroll after he was found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming her

Donald Trump has landed in New York to face a new civil damages lawsuit against E. Jean Carroll after cutting short celebrations of his landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses.

The former president flew into LaGuardia Airport from Des Moines in the early hours of the morning after decimating his rivals in the early primaries, securing more than 50 percent of the vote.

Trump will appear at the courthouse later today in the latest legal challenge against him, which centers on public comments he made about Carroll while he was president and since the first trial.

In May last year, a New York jury found fround Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll, and awarded her $5 million in damages. The panel said there wasn’t enough evidence to say he raped her, as she claimed.

The final trial, which will determine how much damages he must pay to Carroll, is set to begin today despite efforts by Trump’s lawyers to delay it so he could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral.

Former US President and Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks at a watch party during the 2024 Iowa Republican presidential caucuses in Des Moines, Iowa

As of 10 p.m., Trump had more than 50 percent of the vote, while Haley and DeSantis finished in second place

Judge Lewis A Kaplan issued an order on Friday denying the request to postpone the trial for one week.

Furious over the judge’s ruling, Trump blasted Kaplan on his Truth Social platform, labeling him a “bad person and a worse judge” and saying he has “Trump derangment syndrome.”

After the request was denied, the Republican candidate’s campaign team announced he would hold a rally in New Hampshire on Wednesday evening.

The latest Carroll trial is just one of many Trump faces as he seeks to secure a second term in the White House.

He has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges brought against him and has denied wrongdoing in all civil cases brought against him.

In a fraud trial this month, New York Attorney General Letitia James is asking the judge to fine the businessman $370 million.

Before the trial had even begun on October 2, Judge Engoron ruled that Trump had committed fraud by overvaluing his assets by up to $2.2 billion to get better interest rates on bank loans.

The trial aimed to determine what the sentence should be and a verdict is expected on January 31.

Last spring, a panel of six men and three women also found that Trump wounded advice columnist Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in Manhattan in 1996 and defamed her when he called her a liar.

The panel ordered the former president to pay a total of $5 million in damages, making their decision after just three hours of deliberation.

Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by more than two dozen women, but Carroll’s is the only case so far to go before a jury.

The former president decimated his rivals, capturing more than 50 percent of the vote in the first Republican primaries

The 80-year-old Carroll was charged under the Adult Survivors Act, a law passed in New York that allowed a one-year period for sexual assault claims, which normally fall outside the statute of limitations.

Her defamation claim was based on statements Trump, 77, made when he was president in which he called her a liar.

According to jury instructions, sexual abuse meant exposing Carroll to sexual contact without consent.

Sexual contact was defined as “any touching of the sexual or intimate parts of the person for the purpose of satisfying the sexual desire of either party.”

In May, the jury awarded $2 million in compensatory damages and $20,000 in punitive damages for the battery charge.

They also awarded $1 million in damages for the defamation and $1.7 million for the restoration of her reputation and a further $280,000 in damages for the defamation.

One issue not decided during that first trial was how much Trump was owed for comments he made about Carroll while he was president.

Determining that dollar amount will be the sole task of the new jury.

Donald Trump responded to a rape accusation by writer E. Jean Carroll (second from left) by saying he never met her. A photo from 1987 shows them together at a party

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled last year that the new jury did not have to decide again whether Carroll was sexually assaulted or whether Trump’s comments about her were defamatory, as those topics were addressed in the first trial.

Trump is expected at the trial on Tuesday, although his plans for the rest of the week have become unclear since the funeral of Melania Trump’s mother was scheduled for Thursday. The process is expected to take several days.

He has said he wants to testify, but if he does, there are strict limits on what he can talk about. He did not attend last year’s trial and recently said his lawyer advised against it.

Because the trial should focus only on how much Trump owes Carroll, the judge warned Trump and his lawyers that they cannot say to jurors things he said during the campaign or elsewhere, such as claiming she lied about him to to promote. her memoirs.

Kaplan also banned them from saying anything about Carroll’s “past romantic relationships, sexual orientation and previous sexual experiences,” by suggesting that Trump did not sexually assault Carroll or by implying that she was motivated by “a political agenda, financial interests, mental illnesses’. or else.’

They are also prohibited, the judge said, from advancing any argument contrary to the court’s ruling that “Mr. Trump lied with actual malice about sexually assaulting Ms. Carroll.”

These restrictions do not apply outside the presence of the jury. That has given Trump the freedom to continue posting on social media about all of the above topics — something he has done repeatedly in recent days — although each new denial carries the possibility of an increase in damages he must pay.