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The last witness in writer E Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit accusing Donald Trump of rape and defamation gave evidence on Thursday, with the trial expected to go to the jury in New York early next week.
After both sides rested their cases, the judge, Lewis Kaplan, kept the door open to a late appearance in court by the former US president when he set a deadline of 5pm New York time on Sunday for Mr Trump to submit a request to reopen the hearing. The judge did not say if he would grant it.
Earlier on Thursday, Mr Trump said during a visit to Ireland that he was “going to go back” to confront Ms Carroll in court. However, his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, told the judge that the former president had waived his right to testify and was not expected to appear.
On Wednesday the defence team said its only other witness, a technical expert, was too sick to testify.
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That meant the jury of three women and six men has only heard testimony from Ms Carroll’s witnesses and Mr Trump’s legal team has been limited to trying to discredit it.
Among the final witnesses was Ashlee Humphreys, a social media expert, who said that if the jurors find in favour of Ms Carroll she would be entitled to up to $2.7 million (€2.4 million) for reputational damage alone after the former president accused her of lying when she alleged that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in 1996.
On the final day of testimony, the jury also heard from one of Ms Carroll’s close friends, Carol Martin, who said that the advice columnist visited her within two days of Trump’s alleged attack. She described Carroll as “clearly agitated, anxious”.
Ms Martin said she advised Carroll to keep quiet about the alleged assault.
“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,” she said.
Ms Martin said she “kept the covenant” not to talk about what Ms Carroll had told her for many years until the advice columnist went public with her accusations against Mr Trump in 2019.
Asked what she made of Ms Carroll’s claim that Trump attacked her, Ms Martin said: “I believed it then and I believe it today.”
Last week, Ms Carroll testified that Mr Trump “shattered” her reputation by denying the alleged assault occurred. She said she had expected him to say they had a consensual encounter, not deny it altogether.
“It hit me and it laid me low because I lost my reputation. Nobody looked at me the same. It was gone. Even people who knew me looked at me with pity in their eyes, and the people who had no opinion now thought I was a liar and hated me,” she said.
Mr Tacopina told the jury in his opening remarks early last week that he would show that Ms Carroll and her friends conspired to falsely accuse Mr Trump because they “hate” him for winning the 2016 election.
“They schemed to hurt Donald Trump politically,” he said. Mr Tacopina said Carroll did not report the assault at the time because it never occurred.
Both sides are scheduled to deliver final arguments to the jury on Monday. – Guardian