by A notorious video in which former US president Donald Trump was recorded talking disparagingly about women can be shown to jurors deciding what he owes to a columnist who defamed him, a judge has ruled.
US district judge Lewis A Kaplan ruled that the 2005 Access Hollywood video can be shown at the trial, which is set to begin on Tuesday.
In May, a jury awarded E columnist Jean Carroll five million dollars (£3.9 million) after finding that the former president sexually abused her in 1996 and defamed her in 2022 with public denials and revelations that she was lying.
The video was recorded more than a decade before Mr Trump became president. Afterward, Mr. Trump was heard complaining about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women who weren’t his wife while waiting to make a cameo appearance on a soap opera. in the year 2005.
The judge ruled that the tape could provide useful insight into Mr Trump’s state of mind.
“The jury could find that Mr. Trump was willing to admit in private sexual assaults similar to the one alleged by Ms. Carroll,” the judge said.
A jury saw the tape and concluded in May that Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll in a luxury department store in 1996 and defamed her in October 2022. It awarded $5 million in damages.
Next week’s trial will determine what defamation damages Mr Trump must pay Ms Carroll for similar comments he made to her in 2019.
The jury in May did not find enough evidence to conclude that Mr Trump raped Ms Carroll, who testified that the two had a chance encounter that was flirtatious and funny until Mr Trump pushed her against a wall and that he was sexually abused in a Bergdorf Goodman store outfit. room across from Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan. Mr. Trump strongly disputed Carroll’s claim that he raped her in the dressing room when she first publicly disclosed it when she released a memoir in 2019, and Mr Trump is president.
He said that he did not know her, that she was not like that and that she was probably making false claims to promote the sale of her book and for political reasons. about a week ago, that Trump’s statements made her ridicule and threaten her and damaged her career and reputation. She is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and much more in punitive damages. Trump, 77, the leading Republican contender in this year’s presidential race, is listed as a witness for the trial, but he did not show up at last year’s trial and is listed. As part of his ruling on Tuesday, the judge also ruled that Mr Trump’s lawyers cannot introduce evidence or argument “suggesting or implying” that the former president did not sexually assault Ms Carroll, that she fabricated her account on the attack or that she had financial and political motivations to do so.
Mr Trump’s lawyers have not commented on the ruling. At a speech in Iowa on Saturday, Mr. Trump told the crowd that his lawyer had warned him not to attend last year’s trial because “it’s beneath you.” He mocked Miss Carroll at one point. during the speech and complain that “now I have to pay her money, a woman I have no idea who she is.”
When the video surfaced during the 2016 US presidential election, Mr Trump dismissed it as “locker room fun” and a “private conversation”.
Mr. Trump is embroiled in another civil business fraud trial in New York related to claims that his net worth was inflated by billions of dollars on financial statements that helped him obtain business loans and insurance.
The former president plans to deliver his own closing argument in the trial, according to reports in the United States.
Mr Trump attended a court hearing in Washington on Tuesday in a separate case involving federal charges of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, where he suggested that presidents should be immune from prosecution.
“I think, as president, you have to have immunity, very simple,” Mr. Trump said after attending the hearing. “It’s the opening of Pandora’s box and it’s a very sad thing to happen with this whole situation.”
He has long promised to prosecute President Joe Biden if a second Trump administration returns to the White House and has also said former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush could be prosecuted.
He said there will be “bedlam in the country” if the case against him continues.
Federal appeals court judges at the hearing expressed skepticism about Mr. Trump’s argument that he was immune from prosecution.
Judge Karen Le Craft Henderson said: “I think it is paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care of the faithful execution of the laws allows him to violate the criminal law.”
