Donald Trump turned down a last chance to testify at the trial of E. Jean Carroll

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NEW YORK Former President Donald Trump declined his last chance Sunday to testify in a civil trial in which a longtime advice columnist accuses him of raping her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996.

Trump, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, was given until 5 pm Sunday by US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to file a request to testify. Nothing filed.

This is not a surprise. Trump did not appear once during the two-week trial in Manhattan during which writer E. Jean Carroll testified for several days, repeating statements he first made publicly in a 2019 memoir. He is seeking compensatory and punitive damages totaling millions of dollars.

The jury also watched lengthy excerpts from a videotaped deposition in October in which Trump vehemently denied raping Carroll or even knowing her.

Without the Trumps’ testimony, lawyers are scheduled to make closing arguments Monday, with deliberations likely to begin Tuesday.

After the plaintiffs rested their case on Thursday, Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina immediately rested the defense’s case without calling any witnesses. He did not ask for more time for Trump to decide whether to testify. Tacopina declined in an email to comment after the deadline passed Sunday.

On Thursday, Kaplan gave Trump more time to change his mind and request to testify, though the judge did not promise to grant such a request to reopen the defense’s case so Trump could take the stand.

At the time, Kaplan noted that he heard about news reports Thursday that Trump told reporters while visiting his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, that he would likely attend the trial. Trump also criticized Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, as a very hostile and crude judge who did not like me.

On the witness stand, Carroll, 79, testified that Trump, 76, raped her in the spring of 1996 after they met in the entrance of the midtown Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman.

She said the encounter began as a fun and flirty outing as Trump asked her to help him buy a gift for another woman. She said they ended up in the stores desolate lingerie section, where they tempted each other to try on a see-through bodysuit.

As Carroll recalls it, laughter joins them in a dressing room where Trump turns violent, slamming her against a wall, pulling on her pantyhose and raping her before kneeling on her and fleeing the store.

In his deposition, Trump said Carroll did it. He called it a bogus, despicable lie peddled by a nut job trying to stoke sales of his book.

He also repeated his comments in statements that this is not his type.

Shes not my type and thats 100% true, he said.

And he repeated his claims in a 2005 Access Hollywood video in which he bragged that male celebrities could grab women by the genitals without asking.

Historically, that’s true of stars, he said.

Carroll sued Trump in November, minutes after New York state passed a law allowing victims of adult sexual assault to sue others, even if the assaults took place decades ago. that’s the past.

Carrolls’ attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote a letter to the judge on Sunday to complain that Trump still hasn’t removed the April 26 posts on his social media network in which he called Carrolls a manufactured SCAM. And he noted that he had repeatedly lashed out about the trial three days ago in Ireland.

After the April 26 postings on Truth Social, Judge Kaplan, who is not related to the Carrolls’ attorney, said Trump’s comments were grossly inappropriate and expressed concern that Trump was trying to communicate -talk to the jury about things that are none of their business.

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