Donald Trump was warned to control himself or be kicked out of court for loudly muttering that the E. Jean Carroll trial was a ‘witch hunt’ and a ‘con job’.
Judge Lewis Kaplan warned he would have the 77-year-old president removed if he continued to disrupt the columnist’s testimony with comments from behind the defense table.
Trump threw his arms in the air in frustration, shook his head, then said: ‘I would love it. I would love it’.
Before the tense exchange, Carroll told the jury in the $10million defamation trial that Trump’s ‘lies’ had sparked so many death threats she bought bullets for a gun she kept by her head.
A New York jury found last year that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s. The new trial is to decide how much he’ll pay in damages for comments he made while he was president – including: ‘This woman is not my type!’
The jury were shown some of the torrent of vile messages she received including some emails threatening her life.
Choking up, Carroll said that ‘many, many’ commented on her appearance, with the overall message that she was ‘too ugly to go on living’.
Donald Trump shook his head as rape accuser E. Jean Carroll told a New York court he ‘shattered’ her reputation by lying about sexually assaulting her and calling her a ‘wack job’
Judge Lewis Kaplan warned he would have the 77-year-old president (left) removed if he continued to disrupt the columnist’s testimony with comments from behind the defense table
‘DAMMMN YOU ARE SO UGLY A KOMODO DRAGON WOULDN’T TOUCH YOU WITH A TEN FOOT POLE…GO BACK TO YOUR CAVE’, one read.
Another photo showed Carroll’s face next to an alien and the words: ‘Both tell fictitious made up stories’.
Carroll’s dramatic testimony began after Trump was pictured leaving Trump Tower early Wednesday morning with mysterious red cuts on his hands.
She told the jury that Trump ‘shattered’ her reputation by repeatedly ‘lying’ about the attack and suggesting she was ‘too ugly to assault’ by claiming she wasn’t his type.
The judge then admonished Trump for loudly muttering that Carroll had ‘suddenly gotten her memory back’ from behind the defense table throughout her testimony.
Judge Kaplan Trump’s lawyers he should ‘take special care to keep his voice down when conferring with counsel so the jury does not hear’.
It followed a complaint from Carroll’s lawyer Shawn Crowley that the jury could hear what he was saying.
Before the tense exchange, Carroll told the jury in the $10million defamation trial that Trump’s ‘lies’ had sparked so many death threats she bought bullets for a gun she kept by her head
‘Mr Trump has been sitting at the back table and has been loudly saying things through Miss Carrol’s testimony,’ her lawyer Shawn Crowley told the judge.
‘Mr Trump has been sitting at the back table and has been loudly saying things through Miss Carrol’s testimony, he added.
‘(He said) things she’s saying are false, noting she now seems to have her memory back.
‘It’s loud enough for us to hear, I imagine it’s loud enough for the jury to hear it’.
Asked by her lawyer Roberta Kaplan why she was in court, Carroll said: ‘Donald Trump assaulted me and when I wrote about it he said it never happened.
‘He lied and shattered my reputation’.
Trump could be seen shaking his head dismissively.
Carroll told the court that in the same courtroom at a separate trial last year another jury found that she had been ‘sexually assaulted by Donald Trump’.
After calling her a liar when she first went public in 2019, Trump has ‘continued to lie’ about her, Carroll said.
‘He lied last month, he lied on Sunday, he lied yesterday,’ she said: ‘I’m here to get my reputation back and to stop him from telling lies’.
Carroll said that she spent 50 years building up her reputation as an advice columnist because she ‘stuck to the truth’.
Asked how her reputation had been shattered, she said that the day before testifying she looked at Twitter, formerly X, and saw a comment that she was a ‘fraud’.
She said: ‘Previously I was noticed simply as a journalist. Now I’m known as a liar, a fraud and a wack job.
Trump (far left) and Carroll (second left) are pictured with their respective spouses John Johnson and Marla Maples in 1987
Carroll’s dramatic testimony began after Trump was pictured leaving Trump Tower early Wednesday morning with mysterious red cuts on his hands
Trump lawyer Alina Habba is seen leaving Trump Tower to join the motorcade on the way to the Manhattan courtroom
‘People are not dying to write to an advice columnist who the President says is a disgrace’.
Carroll talked about growing up in rural Indiana to a Republican family and won a beauty contest in her youth.
At the age of 13, she sent off her first article to be written but had to wait two decades to have her first success, which came at the age of 36.
But the mood remained testy and after an objection, Judge Kaplan said: ‘Let’s get this clear for both sides.
‘The first lawyer who says anything when a witness is (testifying). This is not tag team lawyering.
‘Carroll talked the jury through her career and described how she wrote articles for magazines like Vanity Fair and an advice column titled ‘Ask E. Jean’ for decades with Elle magazine.
She once hosted an advice TV show and was for a time a writer on Saturday Night Live, as well as writing five books including essays, a memoir and a biography of journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
In 2019 she wrote a book called ‘What Do We Need Men For?’ and decided to go public with her claims about Trump for the first time.
Carroll, pictured arriving in cout on Wednesday, said that she spent 50 years building up her reputation as an advice columnist because she ‘stuck to the truth’
As Habba objected again, Kaplan told her: ‘When you speak in this courtroom you’ll stand up’.
The judge overruled the objection and moved on.
Carroll said she felt like a ‘hypocrite’ because women she interviewed for her book trusted her with their stories yet she wasn’t going public with hers.
She said: ‘I’m 95 years old if I don’t do it now, i will never do it, So I included him’.
Carroll began to describe Trump sexually assaulting her, telling the court he asked her advice to choose some lingerie at Bergdorf’s, but Jude Kaplan stopped her.
The allegations against Trump appeared in an extract of the book in New York magazine on June 21st 2019.
Carroll said that given Trump was president at the time, she expected him to respond.
‘I expected him to deny it but to say it was consensual which was not, that’s what I expected him to say,’ she said.
Instead Trump posted on Twitter, formerly X, calling her a liar, hours later.
Carroll looked through the comments made by Trump and told the jury which were lies.
She said: ‘I’ve never met this woman in my life – that is a lie. I made up the accusation to sell a book – that is a lie
‘I made the accusation for publicity – that is a lie, he said my false accusation damages real victims of sexual assault – that is a lie’.
Habba objected on the grounds that Carool is ‘not a lawyer’ but Judge Kaplan overruled it, earning a shake of the head in frustration from Trump
Carroll said: ‘The thing that really got me about this is from the White House he asked if anyone had any information about me and to please come forward because he wanted to know what’s really going on and that people like me should pay dearly’.
Trump’s motorcade goes into the underground car park at the Manhattan Federal Court on Wednesday for the second day of the defamation trial
Caroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan asked: ‘Have you paid dearly?’
‘I paid just about as dearly as possible to pay,’ Carroll said.
Trump followed up his Tweet with comments on the White House lawn the next day, June 22nd, saying it was a ‘false allegation’.
Carroll said that was a lie too.
She told the court: ‘The thing about this piece statement is he said numerous women had been paid to make false accusations about him….and he includes me in that group. That is not true.
‘He said people like me who make false accusations are very dangerous territory. (He said) I shouldn’t have done it for the sake of publicity. That is also a lie’.
The following Monday Trump, said in an interview that he couldn’t have assaulted Carroll as she was ‘not his type.
Carroll told the court that in the same courtroom at a separate trial last year another jury found that she had been ‘sexually assaulted by Donald Trump ’
Carroll said: ‘It means I’m too ugly to assault’.
Asked how it felt to have the President say these three things about her, Carroll took a breath.
She said: ‘Well to have the President of the United States, one of the most powerful persons on Earth, calling me a liar for three days and saying I’m a liar 26 times it ended the world that I had been living in’.
Carroll said that after that she entered a ‘new world’.
She said: ‘I was attacked. On Twitter, Facebook, news blogs, brutally attacked in messages.
‘It was a new world. I had left the world of facts and I was living in a new universe’.
Carrol said the attacks were ‘instantaneous’ and that many repeated the same language Trump used.
A Facebook message an hour after Trump’s first denial read: ‘Your nothing but a liar! Trump did nothing do you! Your only saying this to promote your book! You have to answer to the LORD for your lies. I hope it is worth it?!’
A n email to her ‘Ask E. Jean’ advice column email account on June 22nd 2019 from a sender called ‘Sports Justice’ read: ‘E. Jean Carroll (claims raped by Trump) = demented, lying old hag’
Another message read: ‘I want to tell you that you are a lying bitch! I believe Trump! Why would he want to rape you when you are so frickin ugly!’
Habba earned yet another rebuke from the judge when she tried to claim she could ask Carroll about who is funding her case because of a question by her lawyers.
Judge Kaplan said: ‘I do not need announcements from counsel about what they intend to do
I make the rulings here not the lawyers. Get that very clear in your mind’. He added: ‘Sit down’