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E. Jean Carroll’s rape and defamation lawsuit against former President Trump went to trial Tuesday.
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The judge asked both parties not to make statements that could “incite violence.”
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The judge previously expressed concerns the jury could be harassed by Trump’s supporters.
The judge presiding over a rape claim lawsuit against former President Donald Trump on Tuesday made a thinly-veiled attempt to stop Trump from publicly commenting on the case.
Opening statements are expected to kick off today in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation and rape lawsuit against Trump. Trump has denied her allegations and was absent in the courtroom as the jury was selected on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.
Before potential jurors were brought into the room, US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan asked attorneys for both sides to advise their clients against “making any statements that will incite violence or civil unrest.”
Kaplan said the warning was not meant to accuse either side of misconduct, but in order to “try to avoid problems down the road.”
As of 2:30 p.m. ET Tuesday, Trump had not weighed in on the case on Truth Social or Facebook.
When reached for comment, Steven Cheung, commications director for the Trump campaign, issued the following statement:
“This latest fake case has no merit or facts and is just another part of the witch hunt targeted to interfere and tamper with a Presidential election. The radical, deranged Democrats will stop at nothing in order to prevent the American people from choosing President Donald Trump— the overwhelming front runner by far— as their 47th President. The lunatics will fail and President Trump will Make America Great Again!”
Kaplan had previously expressed concern over the potential that those selected to serve on the jury in the case could face “harassment or worse” from Trump’s supporters. So last month he ordered that the jury would be anonymous, meaning that their names will not be released and that they will be ferried to the court every day by US Marshals from a secret location.
The jury was selected Tuesday afternoon, shortly after 1 p.m. Opening statements will begin Tuesday afternoon.
The lawsuit stems from Carroll’s allegation that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. She’s suing him for the alleged act itself, and for defamation — for his comments calling her story a “hoax and a lie” in a post on Truth Social in October.
She wants Trump to retract his statements and for the jury to award her unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
While Carroll, a longtime Elle advice columnist, says she told two friends shortly after the alleged assault, she never went public with the story until June 2019, in an essay for New York magazine.
When Trump loudly denied her claim in statements to the press — saying Carroll was not his “type” and that she made up the story to sell her memoir — Carroll sued him for defamation.
In her lawsuit, Carroll says that Trump’s comments have “injured the reputation on which she makes her livelihood as a writer, advice columnist, and journalist.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
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