Donald Trump and E Jean Carroll in court as defamation trial resumes – live | Donald Trump

Victoria Bekiempis

As one might expect, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba is trying to use Carol Martin to undermine Carroll’s credibility. She asked about their time at America’s Talking.

Do you know whether Ms Carroll was reprimanded at work for inappropriate work directed at Mr Ailes?

Carroll’s team objected and Judge Kaplan sustained their objection.

Victoria Bekiempis

Carol Martin, is retired news anchor whom Carroll told about the alleged rape. Carroll told Martin about the incident several days after the alleged attack.

Carroll and Martin both worked at America’s Talking, a now-shuttered television network started by Roger Ailes. After they both finished work one day, Carroll had asked if they could hang out, Martin testified in Carroll’s first trial.

Martin previously told jurors they were in her kitchen when Carroll “started telling me what had just happened”.

Martin recounted how Carroll told her about the alleged incident. “What, if anything, did you say to Ms Carroll about what she should do in the future?” Martin was asked at the first trial.

“She explained that she thought she was doing the right thing by not doing anything,” Martin had said.

But she wasn’t asking me what I would do, and so at some point, I just volunteered that I didn’t think she should do anything because he was Donald Trump, and he had a lot of attorneys, and I thought he would bury her, is what I told her.

“I have questioned myself more times than not over the years as to why I told her that,” Martin said in the first trial.

I am not proud that that’s what I had told her.

Victoria Bekiempis

With Carroll’s camp officially resting, Trump’s team is beginning the defense case.

Habba said:

Defense calls Carol Martin to the stand, please.

If Trump actually testifies, as he claimed he would, he would do so after Martin’s testimony ends.

Defense to call Carol Martin to the stand

Victoria Bekiempis

Trump’s lead attorney, Alina Habba, said that the defense’s first witness will be Carol Martin.

Martin is a friend of Carroll’s and a former anchor at WCBS-TV in New York, who has publicly corroborated the writer’s allegations of sexual assault by Donald Trump.

During the first defamation trial against Trump last May, Martin said Carroll visited her within two days of Trump’s alleged attack. She described Carroll as “clearly agitated, anxious”.

Martin said she advised Carroll to keep quiet about the alleged assault. She said:

I just volunteered that she shouldn’t do anything because it was Donald Trump and he had a lot of attorneys and he would just bury her.

Martin said she “kept the covenant” not to talk about what Carroll had told her for many years until the advice columnist went public with her accusations against Trump in 2019.

Asked what she made of Carroll’s claim that Trump attacked her, Martin said:

I believed it then and I believe it today.

Victoria Bekiempis

The plaintiff rests.

Donald Trump’s lawyers are up next.

Victoria Bekiempis

We’re now on a short break.

Carroll’s team said they’re about to rest.

They said that Donald Trump’s team expects to call two witnesses, and he’s one of them.

It’s not like the judges in his cases haven’t tried to curtail Donald Trump’s court theatrics. But they are in a bind: treating Trump like any other defendant and enforcing order in their courtrooms plays into his claims of political persecution.

The judge in the New York business fraud case, Arthur Engoron, ordered Trump to pay a $110,000 fine back in 2022 for dragging his feet in responding to a subpoena from the New York state attorney general. (He paid, but appealed the ruling; the money is being held in escrow until a final ruling is made.)

Last October, Engoron placed a gag order on Trump barring him from attacking court staff, fined him $5,000 for violating it when Trump publicly disparaged a court staffer, and warned him that a future violation could result in jail time. Trump ignored the warning and did it again; Engoron responded with a $10,000 fine and a warning of, “Don’t do it again, or it will be worse” – but no jail time. The Trump team’s response was to put out a statement calling Engoron a “Democrat Judge, under control of radical [New York Democratic attorney general] Letitia James”.

In Trump’s pending January 6 case in DC, the judge, Tanya Chutkan, placed a gag order on Trump last fall barring him from attacking prosecutors, court staff and potential trial witnesses after he posted inflammatory statements that called special counsel Jack Smith “deranged” and suggested his former chief of staff and a possible witness in the trial, Mark Meadows, was a coward.

Trump has appealed the order, but the federal appeals court has declined to lift it. The latest decision came on Tuesday, when the full appeals court unanimously refused to reconsider Trump’s request. He’s likely to appeal that to the US supreme court. But so far, there have been few signs he can win this particular fight.

The biggest question in E Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Donald Trump isn’t whether Trump will be found liable (he already was) or even how much he’ll have to pay her (it could be a lot).

It’s how he’ll behave – and what, if anything, the judge can do to rein him in.

The last time Trump was in court, he grumbled so loudly from his seat that the judge, Lewis Kaplan, warned him he could be kicked out of court. “Mr Trump has the right to be present here. That right can be forfeited, and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive,” he said. “Mr Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial.”

“I would love it. I would love it,” Trump replied, apparently goading the judge to land on him hard so he could use it for political fodder.

It’s hard to think of how Trump could show more contempt (in the emotional, not legal, sense) for the multiple cases against him. He has repeatedly insulted and attacked prosecutors, judges and witnesses, and has clearly decided to make a spectacle of himself showing up unannounced when he isn’t required.

His claims of a “witch-hunt” have become a staple in his campaign speeches. On Tuesday, during his victory speech after winning the New Hampshire primary, he said: “Just a little note to Nikki. She’s not going to win. But if she did, she would be under investigation by those people in 15 minutes.”

Jury shown video of Trump confusing Carroll with ex-wife in deposition

Victoria Bekiempis

Carroll’s team is now showing jurors various exhibits including a television appearance where Donald Trump repeated a denial and an excerpt of a video deposition where he’s boasting about his wealth.

Earlier this month, Trump appeared in a courtroom in the civil case brought by New York attorney general Letitia James, who has argued the former president and his business associates should pay $370m for decades of financial fraud.

Carroll’s camp played one of the most shocking deposition excerpts of Trump, in which he mistook a photo of Carroll for his ex-wife, Marla Maples. This was also played in Carroll’s first trial against the ex-president.

Here’s the video clip of Trump’s deposition where he mistook a picture of Carroll for Maples: