Former United States President, Donald Trump, on Friday, walked out of the courtroom as Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer for E Jean Carroll, delivered her closing argument in Carroll’s defamation suit.
Kaplan was about 10 minutes into her remarks when Trump, who was seated at the defence table, got up and walked out of the courtroom.
Carroll, 80, is seeking at least $10 million over Trump’s June 2019 denials, when he was president, that he had raped her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan.
The former president accused Carroll of making up the encounter to boost sales of her memoir.
But another jury in May 2023 ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million over a similar denial in October 2022, finding that Trump had defamed and sexually abused Carroll.
READ ALSO: Jury finds Trump sexually abused, defamed writer, awards woman $5m
Because that verdict is binding for the current trial, the seven-man, two-woman jury needs to decide only how much Trump owes Carroll for harming her reputation, and whether to impose punitive damages to keep the former president from defaming her again.
Before Trump left the court, Kaplan repeatedly told the jury that he sexually assaulted Carroll, prompting the former president to shake his head.
She then moved on to Trump’s repeated defamatory statements, and said that “typically when people are held liable for false and defamatory lies, they stop”.
Kaplan said: “He continued to defame Ms. Carroll even as this trial was ongoing.
“This case is also about punishing Donald Trump for what he has done, and what he continues to do.
“This trial is about getting him to stop, once and for all.”
A lawyer for the former president will offer a closing argument later.
He has attended most of the trial, which is in its fifth day.
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