Donald Trump spent Monday morning going on yet another unhinged tirade against sexual assault accuser E Jean Carroll, after the judge in the writer’s defamation case against the indicted former president ordered a last-minute delay of the trial.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan announced on Monday that the trial will be delayed by at least a day due to one of the nine jurors in the case reported feeling unwell. Kaplan is awaiting Covid-19 test results for all the jurors.
Trump attorney Alina Habba also reported not feeling well after visiting her parents, at least one of whom has Covid-19. According to Kaplan, Habba and law partner Michael Madaio both tested negative for the virus on Monday, and neither of them wore a mask in court. There is no indication that Trump is feeling physically unwell, and the former president also did not wear a mask in court on Monday.
It is unclear when the trial will resume, with Trump’s legal team asking Kaplan to postpone the Republican front-runner’s next court appearance until after New Hampshire’s presidential primary on Tuesday. The judge did not immediately rule on the request Monday.
Carroll has accused Trump of raping her in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store in the 1996. A separate New York jury last year found that Trump was liable for Carroll’s sexual abuse, and awarded her $5 million in damages ― $2 million for the sexual abuse finding and $3 million for defamatory comments he made against her in 2022. Trump is appealing that decision.
Carroll’s defamation claims against the former president were divided between two lawsuits, the second focusing on disparaging comments he made about her in 2019 after she went public about the assault. Kaplan made a summary judgment in September finding Trump liable for the 2019 claims, narrowing the scope of the current trial to focus on what damages the jury will award Carroll. The writer is seeking more than $10 million in the current proceeding.
Trump is expected to take the witness stand in this case, though Kaplan has ruled that because of last year’s verdict, the former president cannot accuse Carroll of lying about being sexually abused while he testifies.
But facing a defamation trial has not stopped Trump from repeatedly going on tirades against Carroll, accusing her without evidence of faking a sexual assault for financial or political reasons. Just last week, Kaplan threatened to kick Trump out of the courtroom after he kept loudly complaining to his lawyers that the trial is a “witch hunt” and a “con job”.
The former president has also held press gaggles outside the courthouse and gone on diatribes on his social media platform, Truth Social, to attack Carroll for her accusation. A tirade he unleashed online last Tuesday was entered into the court record just hours later.
But Trump’s attacks becoming evidence in real time have not stopped him from continuing to rant about Carroll and the case.
In the span of one hour, the former president made at least 42 posts on Truth Social attacking Carroll on Monday morning. Many of those posts include screenshots of posts Carroll made on social media in roughly the past decade that involve the topic of sex, something Trump has done before when attacking her online.
It is not immediately clear if Trump’s latest online tirade will also be entered into the court record.