Donald Trump went straight from his victory in the Republican Iowa caucuses to a New York courtroom Tuesday for the start of a defamation trial brought by writer E. Jean Carroll after an earlier jury found he had sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
In court, the former US president did not make any statements, and he and Carroll avoided looking at each other while jurors were being selected, according to reporters allowed inside the courtroom.
But Trump continued attacking Carroll on his Truth Social platform, reposting a clip from an interview she gave to CNN and writing, “Can you believe I have to defend myself against this woman’s fake story?!”
The 77-year-old Republican White House frontrunner, seen leaving the courthouse at about 3:00 pm, headed to the northeastern state of New Hampshire, which will hold the nation’s second presidential nomination contest next Tuesday.
The shocking case, which would likely once have been enough to wreck any politician’s career, has had no visible impact on Trump’s bid to retake the White House — and if anything is boosting his standing with his party’s right wing.
Carroll, 80, is seeking more than $10 million in damages in the civil trial, alleging that Trump defamed her in 2019 when he was president and she had just come out with her allegation, saying she “is not my type.”
This is separate to a civil case last year where another New York jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a department store dressing room in 1996 and subsequently defaming her in 2022, when he called her a “complete con job.”
In that case, the jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
This is only one of many trials swirling over Trump’s head. He has been indicted in four criminal cases and faces 91 counts on allegations including his attempts to undermine the 2020 election which he lost to Joe Biden, taking stacks of top secret documents, and business fraud.
Trump has embraced his legal problems as evidence of a conspiracy theory in which a nebulous “deep state” is out to stop him from returning to power.
