Judge denies Donald Trump’s motion for mistrial in rape and defamation case
Donald Trump
Former US president Donald Trump’s motion seeking a mistrial in a civil battery and defamation lawsuit filed by columnist E Jean Carroll was denied by Judge Lewis Kaplan who is overseeing the case.
The judge denied the motion for a mistrial before testimony resumed on Monday. He did not explain his decision, ABC News reported.
Mistrial requests are rarely granted, but they can serve as the basis for eventual appeals, the AP news agency reported.
Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina, in a letter filed on Monday, claimed that Judge Kaplan had made “pervasive unfair and prejudicial rulings” against him, and asked the federal judge to “correct the record for each and every instance in which the court has mischaracterised the facts of this case to the jury” or provide him greater leeway in cross-examining Carroll.
“Here, despite the fact trial testimony has been underway for only two days, the proceedings are already replete with numerous explains of the defendant’s unfair treatment by the court, most of which has been witnessed by the Jury,” the letter read.
'Donald Trump Raped Me': US writer testifies before court in Lawsuit trial
The author is suing the 76-year-old Republican, alleging that he raped her in the 1990s and then defamed her when she came forward in 2019. Trump has denied the allegations.
She claimed that an unexpected encounter brought them together on a day that was “fun and flirtatious” until Trump became violent in the dressing room.
Last week, she testified that "Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn't happen."
During her testimony, Carroll said that she wouldn't have come forward with her accusation if not for the #MeToo movement, which gained prominence in 2017.
Tacopina also pointed out that the judge restricted him from asking additional questions to Carroll about her efforts to obtain security camera footage from the store, “expressing a corroborative view” that nobody was on the sixth floor of the Bergdorf Goodman store at the time of the alleged assault.
Trump’s lawyer also criticised Judge Kaplan saying that certain lines of his questioning were “argumentative” in front of the jury.
On Monday morning, the cross-examination of Carroll resumed.
(With inputs from agencies)
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