Trump attends court to face victim he ‘never met, saw or touched’

Donald Trump arrived at a Manhattan court on Tuesday to face a sex abuse victim who he had earlier claimed he “never met, saw or touched”.

The former president, 77, was found liable in a civil trial last year for sexually abusing and defaming magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll.

She claimed Mr Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room nearly 30 years ago. The jury did not find Mr Trump liable for rape.

Mr Trump skipped the first trial, but arrived at the federal court in New York on Tuesday morning for the second defamation case that focuses on comments he made in 2019 accusing Ms Carroll, 80, of making up the allegations to sell books.

Hours before arriving at court, he risked a further defamation suit by suggesting that Ms Carroll’s claims were “pure fiction”.

“After a historic win in Iowa, I am going to the Biden encouraged Witch Hunt in Lower Manhattan to fight against a FAKE Case from a woman I have never met, seen, or touched (Celebrity Lines don’t count!),” Mr Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network.

He claimed that the trial was a “a giant Election Interference Scam”, adding: “I had no idea who this woman was. PURE FICTION!”

Ms Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages in May from a previous lawsuit – STEPHANIE KEITH/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA

His comments are likely to anger Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case.

Judge Kaplan said that this week’s trial is not a “do over” of the first and banned Mr Trump and his lawyers from claiming he did not sexually abuse Ms Carroll in front of the jury.

On Saturday, Mr Trump called Judge Kaplan a “terrible, biased, irrationally angry Clinton-appointed judge” and restated his assertion that he does not know Ms Carroll and has never met her before.

“These are animals,” Mr Trump said of the judges overseeing multiple civil claims and criminal cases against him.

Judge Kaplan denied a request from Mr Trump’s lawyers to postpone the trial for one week so he could attend the funeral of his mother-in-law, Amalija Knavs, in Florida on Thursday.

Before jurors were brought in, opposing teams of lawyers tussled over witnesses and Mr Trump’s request for the trial to be suspended.

Alina Habba, a lawyer for Mr Trump, told the court that it was “completely unfair” for her client to have to make a choice between his mother-in-law’s funeral and fighting a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit.

Judge Kaplan said he was unwilling to suspend the trial, adding that it was up to the defendant to make a decision on which event to attend.

The judge did, however, offer to extend the trial by an extra day if Mr Trump, who is not obligated to attend court, chooses to testify.

Lawyers for Ms Carroll, who was awarded $5 million (£3.9 million) following last year’s trial, requested $10 million (£7.9 million) in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages for a series of statements Mr Trump made denying her claims.

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