E Jean Carroll’s New York defamation trial against Donald Trump resumed on Thursday with the ex-president’s lawyer trying to discredit her on cross-examination with a bizarre dialectic about genitals and by intimating that she has loose morals.
“Did you ever post any tweets that could be considered sexually explicit?” Alina Habba, Trump’s lead attorney, asked.
Carroll’s team objected. Presiding judge Lewis Kaplan sustained the objection.
As Habba hammered on about the sexual commentary on Carroll’s social media accounts (the former Elle columnist has written about sex and relationships for years), questioning took a turn for the absurd.
“Yes,” Carroll said.
“And you posted them on a public social media account?”
“Yes.”
“And you left that on your Twitter account as we stand here today, correct?”
Carroll answered in the affirmative.
Pressed to explain the tweet, Carroll said: “It’s a philosophical question.”
“Sometimes a woman doesn’t feel like making love and the man wants to,” Carroll explained, adding that sometimes it’s the reverse.
“You discussed penises?” Habba said.
Carroll said: “Yes.”
Carroll took the stand on Wednesday in the Manhattan federal court trial, which will determine financial penalties against the former US president over his denials of her rape allegation against him in 2019.
“I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me, and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened,” Carroll told jurors. “He lied, and it shattered my reputation.”
Trump was present for Carroll’s opening testimony Wednesday and his lack of courtroom decorum quickly drew the attention of her team – and prompted a stern warning from judge Kaplan.
“Mr Trump has been sitting at the back table and has been loudly saying things throughout Ms Carroll’s testimony,” Shawn Crowley, one of Carroll’s attorneys, said.
“It’s loud enough for us to hear it,” Crowley stated, so “I imagine it’s loud enough for the jury to hear it.”
Before proceedings resumed after the break, Kaplan warned: “I’m just going to ask Mr Trump to take special care to keep his voice down when conferring with counsel, so that the jury does not overhear.”
Trump did not abide by Kaplan’s instruction.
“The defendant has been making statements again [that] we can hear at counsel table,” Crowley told the judge right before the lunch break.
“He said it is a ‘witch-hunt’, it really is a con-job.”
“Mr Trump has the right to be present here. That right can be forfeited, and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive, which is what has been reported to me, and if he disregards court orders,” Kaplan said.
“Mr Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial … I understand you are probably very eager for me to do that.
