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- Donald Trump intends to testify in the libel trial against E. Jean Carroll, his lawyer has revealed.
- The trial was postponed to Monday over fears of COVID-19 among jurors, and New Hampshire’s primary election will be held on Tuesday.
- The trial will also be paused on Tuesday, allowing Trump to testify following the primary.
Donald Trump will have the opportunity to testify in his defense in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial this week, as his campaign schedule is in jeopardy.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan initially detained Mr. Trump, Mr. Carroll and their attorneys on Monday, but agreed to postpone the trial until Wednesday morning.
The delay will allow the former president to spend Tuesday campaigning in New Hampshire and not have to worry about missing out on an opportunity to give important testimony to jurors. The jury will decide how much money Carroll will have to pay for defamation.
The former president flew to New York early Monday morning and rolled into Manhattan’s Kaplan courtroom around 9 a.m., ready to take the witness stand in the case.
Juror No. 3 then declared an illness likely due to COVID-19.
And what about Tuesday? Yes, it’s New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary — and Trump announced Monday, through his legal team, that he plans to participate there.
A series of events, including a juror falling ill and Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, nearly conspired to keep Trump from the witness stand altogether.
Mr. Trump’s myriad legal issues, including four criminal cases and many more civil suits, were widely expected to cause a logjam in his campaign to regain the presidency.
The reverse is also happening, as his campaign schedule is squeezed into the court calendar.
“My client reminded me — I was in trial mode — that he’s in New Hampshire,” Alina Haba, the lead attorney representing Trump in the case, said in court Monday morning. “There is a need,” he said in court Monday morning, after saying he was as well as the jury. I felt a little feverish.
Mr. Haba told Mr. Kaplan: “All you need to do is give his testimony on Wednesday.”
In court Monday morning, the judge, who showed little patience for delays and rule-breaking by Trump and his defense team, initially said the next update on which jurors or parties may have conducted the tests The decision to further postpone the trial was reserved until the case was released. positive.
Had Mr. Kaplan decided to push the trial forward Tuesday, Mr. Trump likely would have had no chance to testify.
But just before 5 p.m., the judge posted an update to the court record saying the trial would eventually be skipped by a day on Tuesday. Kaplan selected nine jurors for the civil trial, with no alternate jurors.
The judge’s announcement that the juror had coronavirus symptoms was announced at the beginning of the trial, shortly after 10 a.m. Monday, after Trump and Carroll had taken their seats but before the jury was seated.
“Juror #3 was on his way to the city,” the judge announced to the room. However, the jury added that halfway through he felt “hot and nauseous”.
Jurors were instructed to go home, take a coronavirus test and tell the court if they tested positive. Haba said she did not want the trial to continue without her.
The only two other witnesses in the case who have not yet been heard are former Elle editor-in-chief Robbie Myers, who is on Carroll’s side, and journalist Carol Martin, who is defending. The two witnesses are expected to be present for less than a day.
Carroll’s lawyers have accused her of damaging Carroll’s reputation as a truth-telling advice columnist by calling her a liar and slandering her when President Trump accused her of sexual abuse in the 1990s. claims to have caused damage.
Trump took advantage of Monday’s delay to reiterate to his followers on Truth Social that he knows “absolutely nothing” about Carroll, even though a jury found him sexually abusing her last year. Ta. He also complained that the trial was held in the middle of election season, even though his lawyers have been fighting for years to delay the case.
“They all may have started years ago, or years later, but never during an election,” he wrote. “They should never have been brought in because the fact is I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Before sending everyone home Monday morning, the judge also ruled on Haba’s motion for a miscarriage of justice over Carroll’s deletion of a death threat email.
“It was denied on every count,” Kaplan said.
This article was updated Monday night with the court’s announcement that Carroll’s trial will resume Wednesday.
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