A judge rejected Donald Trump’s attorney Joseph Tacopina’s request for a mistrial Monday in former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll’s sexual battery and defamation case against the former president, according to Reuters.
Carroll claimed in 2019 that Trump raped her in 1995 or 1996 in a dressing room at Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store, and she sued him after he denied knowing her and called the case “a hoax and a lie” told as she promoted her 2019 book “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.” Judge Lewis Kaplan declined to grant a mistrial Monday, Reuters reported, after Tacopina sent him a letter the same day accusing the court of misconduct including mischaracterizing evidence in Carroll’s favor. (RELATED: Trump Threatens To Skip Republican Primary Debates)
A one-time Bergdorf Goodman store manager testified that all of the store’s entrance and exit doors had surveillance cameras, but the court stopped Trump’s defense from questioning Carroll about whether she had tried to obtain such footage, suggesting that its existence was uncertain, according to Tacopina.
“Defendant maintains that Plaintiff did not seek footage of her alleged rape because no such alleged rape occurred,” Tacopina said. He also argued the court had expressed a corroborative view to the jury that no one was present on the store’s sixth floor when the rape allegedly occurred, despite this claim being disputed.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 25: Magazine Columnist E. Jean Carroll leaves after the first day of her civil trial against former President Donald Trump at Manhattan Federal Court on April 25, 2023 in New York City. Jury selections begin in the Carroll civil trial against the former president, which she alleges attacked and sexually assaulted her in a dressing room of a luxury department store in the 1990s. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Carroll testified last week that she thought Trump had raped her on a Thursday, saying, “I wish to heaven we could give you a date,” Politico reported. Tacopina petitioned the court Monday for “greater latitude” to cross-examine Carroll and her witnesses if it refused to grant a mistrial.
“Despite the fact trial testimony has been underway for only two days, the proceedings are already replete with numerous examples of the Defendant’s unfair treatment by the Court, most of which have been witnessed by the jury,” Tacopina said.
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