Ex-president undecided if he will attend

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E. Jean Carroll is seen outside the State Supreme Court on March 4, 2020, in New York. Caroll sued Donald Trump for defamation.

Alec Tabak for the New York Daily News | Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump has not yet decided whether he will attend his upcoming rape defamation trial, his lawyer told a federal judge Thursday.

Trump and E. Jean Carroll, the writer who accused the former president of raping her in a department store in the 1990s and then defamed her when she went public with her story, face a Thursday deadline to tell a judge about the their plans to attend the trial.

The defamation trial is scheduled to begin in US District Court in Manhattan next Tuesday. In a new court filing posted Thursday afternoon, Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina told Judge Lewis Kaplan that he could not yet make a commitment about attending.

Trump’s decision “will be made during the trial,” Tacopina wrote. For that reason, “we are not yet in a position to advise the Court on this,” he told the judge.

“However, we will inform the Court as soon as a decision is reached, especially in light of the logistical concerns that need to be addressed in contacting the Secret Service, the Marshals Service, and the City of New York,” the attorney said. . wrote.

Carroll plans to attend the entire trial and testify under oath before the jury, his attorney said Wednesday in a letter to Kaplan.

If Trump does not appear at the trial, Tacopina on Wednesday asked Kaplan to tell the jury that the former president’s absence would save “logistical burdens” on the courthouse and New York City. Carroll’s attorney criticized that request as “frivolous,” and the judge ultimately denied it Thursday.

“There was no reference by counsel for Mr. Trump to the presence of the grand jury or the trial jury to Mr. Trump’s alleged desire to testify or to the burdens that any absence on his part would have alleged.” y could save, or could save, the Court or the City of New York,” the judge wrote Thursday.

Attorneys for both parties told Kaplan that Trump traveled to New York recently to address separate legal matters.

Earlier this month, Trump was arrested and charged in Manhattan on dozens of charges of falsifying business records in connection with hush payments made before the 2016 presidential election. The indictment from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg makes Trump the first former president to face criminal charges.

Tacopina, who is also defending Trump in that case, cited the spectacle caused by his arraignment to bolster his argument that it may be too difficult for him to appear for Carroll’s trial.

Carroll’s attorney, in his response to Tacopina, said that Trump recently came to Manhattan to sit for a deposition at the New York Attorney General’s office, which is prosecuting a civil case over business practices. of the former president.

He also noted that Trump, now a leading contender for the 2024 presidential nomination, is scheduled to travel to New Hampshire for a campaign event in late April “in other words, in the middle of the trial in this case.”

If he can attend those and other events, “then he will certainly be able to overcome the logistics of attending his own federal trial,” Carroll’s attorney wrote.

Carroll’s lawsuit alleges that Trump raped her in a dressing room of the New York City department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. He filed the indictment in 2019, while Trump was president.

Trump accused Carroll of lying, telling news outlet The Hill, “She’s not my type.” He criticized her again in 2022, accusing her of changing his story and “promoting a really dirty book.”

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