Donald Trump’s testimony in the writer E Jean Carroll’s defamation case ended almost immediately after it began, as the former US president stood by his earlier testimony that Carroll’s claim that he raped her was a hoax.
Earlier on Thursday, Carroll’s lawyers played videotaped excerpts from the deposition, in which Trump called the former Elle magazine advice columnist “mentally sick” and a “whack job”, and threatened to sue her.
“It’s a false accusation, never happened, never would happen,” Trump said in the deposition.
Judge threatens to kick Trump out for loud talking as sex abuse accuser speaks
Judge threatens to kick Trump out for loud talking as sex abuse accuser speaks
Carroll, 80, is seeking at least US$10 million over Trump’s June 2019 denials that he had raped her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan, New York.
Last May, another jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll US$5 million after he denied her rape claim in October 2022.
Trump spent only four minutes in the witness box after US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who has overseen both trials, said Trump could not revisit that jury’s findings that he had defamed and sexually abused Carroll.
Kaplan said he would not allow “do-overs by disappointed litigants”.
The trial has lasted four days and closing arguments are expected on Friday.