Former President Donald Trump won’t testify in the civil trial over allegations he raped writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s
Trump attorneys did not issue a filing by the 5 p.m. deadline that Judge Lewis Kaplan set for them to notify the court if the former president wanted to testify. Closing arguments in the trial are set to begin at 10 a.m. Monday.
Lawyers for Trump and Carroll rested their case in the civil trial last week. Kaplan left open the possibility for Trump, who had said he would not appear in person, to take the witness stand in his own defense, giving him until 5 p.m. Sunday to change his mind. The trial now moves to closing arguments Monday.
Trump attorneys said last week that their client will not testify and that they are not putting on any witnesses — a position Trump attorney Joe Tacopina reiterated at the end of court Thursday when he rested. He told the judge that he’d spoken to Trump on Thursday morning and that Trump had waived his right to testify.
Trump, however, told reporters on a golf course in Ireland last week that he was “going back to New York” because of the case.
Asked whether he was going to the trial, he said, “I’ll probably attend,” according to a Sky News video of his remarks. “She’s a fake,” he said of Carroll. “It’s a disgrace.”
Carroll sued Trump for battery and defamation, alleging he raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s and then falsely accused her of making claims that amount to a “hoax” and a “con job” after she went public with the allegations in 2019. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
