Donald Trump made an appearance in court to address a legal dispute. The court time was short.
The civil trial is about mean things Mr. Trump said about Ms. Carroll in 2019 when he was in the White House.
He was caught for sexually attacking Ms. Carroll in the 1990s, but he still says he didn’t do it.
However, the court had to spend a lot of time discussing the extent of his testimony on Thursday for this reason.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is in charge of the case, said the former US president can only talk about certain things in court because he was found responsible for sexually assaulting Ms Carroll in a different trial.
This caused the judge and lawyers to argue for a long time about what Mr. Trump could talk about, which was much longer than his four minutes of testimony.
Judge Kaplan said the first trial proved what happened and now the only thing left to decide is how much money Mr Trump has to give Ms Carroll, if any.
He didn’t give the current top Republican candidate any chance to speak beyond what was agreed. This made it impossible for the candidate to talk a lot or promote their campaign while testifying.
Maybe this is something Mr. Trump has learned from his other legal fights. In a trial for fraud in New York, Mr. Trump was first told he could not give his final statement. The judge in that case wanted to know if Mr. Trump would be brief and only talk about the important parts of the case.
Mr Trump talked for six minutes and said that he feels unfairly treated by politics.
The old person didn’t have as much freedom during the defamation trial on Thursday.
When he was asked if he still agreed with what he said before, Mr. Trump said, “Yes, absolutely. ”
His lawyer, Alina Habba, then asked if he said he didn’t do what Ms Carroll said he did. “He said, ‘Yes, that’s correct, I did. ‘”
He said “She said something that I thought was a lie – completely untrue”.
However, Judge Kaplan quickly stopped Mr. Trump and told the jury to pay no attention to his last statement.
Finally, Ms Habba asked if her client told anyone to hurt Ms Carroll. Mr Trump said, “No, I just wanted to protect myself, my family and the presidency. ” The judge again removed the last part from the record.
And that’s the end of the testimony. A WCBS reporter heard Mr. Trump say, as he left the courtroom, that it’s not the America he knows. This is not the United States.
Earlier today, Judge Kaplan told him to not talk loudly and interrupt the proceedings. He was overheard quietly saying that he had never met Ms Carroll.
It feels like we’ve seen this before when watching one of Mr. Trump’s trials In court, he has often pushed the boundaries and taken big legal risks.
If Trump had given evidence that went beyond what the judge allowed on Thursday, he could have been fined a lot of money or even sent to jail for lying.
However, Trump’s followers are staying interested and paying attention to his legal issues because he is doing things his own way.
And most importantly, it’s getting a lot of attention from the media at a very important time for the politician. After winning in New Hampshire, the former real estate businessman from New York is likely to be the Republican candidate for president.
Ronnell Andersen Jones, who teaches law at the University of Utah, said to media that this case demonstrates the big difference between Mr Trump’s legal tactics and his actions during the election.
The ex-president and his lawyers are trying to tell the jury that his words in the White House were not bad enough to deserve punishment, but it’s hard to believe that considering what he did.
“Ms Jones said it will be difficult because the jury keeps hearing new evidence that the defendant is still spreading lies outside the courtroom. ”
The trial for slander will start again on Friday at 09:30 ET (14:30 GMT) with final statements from both sides. We don’t know yet if Mr. Trump will go.