Donald Trump Prepares For E. Jean Carroll Trial By Flipping Off Judge

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(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

If the pre-trial shenanigans are a prelude, Donald Trump’s lawyers are about to turn next week’s defamation trial in the case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll against Donald Trump into a three-ring circus.

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In the four years since Carroll sought redress for an alleged mid-90s sexual assault by the former president, Trump has thrown sand in the gears at every turn. From ducking the process server, to claiming he was acting in his official capacity when he slimed her, to filing motion after motion seeking to delay the trial, Trump’s lawyers have made themselves completely obnoxious to the court. And while attorney Joseph Tacopina promised when he entered his appearance in February to turn down the temperature after years of his co-counsel Alina Habba antagonizing Judge Lewis Kaplan, things have only gotten crazier since then.

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In the past week, Tacopina and Habba filed two additional requests to postpone the case, in addition to a spurious allegation that Carroll’s lawyer behaved unethically. But nothing can top the comedy of their response to an April 10 order for the parties to inform the court of their intention to attend the trial and on which days. (Although an order on April 18 in which the court referred to “material inaccuracies in Mr. Tacopina’s letter” as “misunderstandings” due to his failure to attend a meeting comes close.)

On April 18, two days before the court’s deadline, Carroll’s lawyers informed the court that she will be present “throughout the trial.”

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Yesterday, on the 19th, Tacopina requested that the judge instruct the jury that his client was “excused” from attending the trial because his security team would be a burden on the court:

Although Defendant Trump wishes to appear at trial, in order to avoid the burdens outlined above, if he does not do so, we respectfully request that the Court issue to the jury the following preliminary instruction: While no litigant is required to appear at a civil trial, the absence of the defendant in this matter, by design, avoids the logistical burdens that his presence, as the former president, would cause the courthouse and New York City. Accordingly, his presence is excused unless and until he is called by either party to testify.

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Carroll’s team responded that. “If Mr. Trump decides not to appear at his own trial for sexual assault and defamation, the jury may draw whatever inferences it chooses—and Mr. Trump has no right to a judicial endorsement of his (flimsy) excuse. ” They also noted that Trump’s security needs did not prevent him attending the NRA convention, a UFC fight, and his deposition by the New York Attorney General in just the past week, and that he intends to hold a campaign rally in New Hampshire next Wednesday during the trial itself.

Today the court unceremoniously dropkicked Trump’s request for a hall pass, noting that “the Court neither excuses nor declines to excuse Mr. Trump from attending the trial or from testifying in this case. As far as the Court is aware, Mr. Trump is under no legal obligation to be present or to testify. The plaintiff has made clear that she does not intend to call him as a witness. The decision whether to attend or to testify is his alone to make. There is nothing for the Court to excuse.”

After expressing his confidence that the US Marshals are perfectly capable of accommodating Trump’s security needs, Judge Kaplan observed that Trump is currently traipsing all over the country to campaign, including his New Hampshire event next week.

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“If the Secret Service can protect him at that event, certainly the Secret Service, the Marshals Service, and the City of New York can see to his security in this very secure federal courthouse,” he continued, noting that there has been “quite ample time within which to make whatever logistical arrangements should be made for his attendance, and certainly quite a bit more time than the five or six days between his recent indictment on state criminal charges and his arraignment on that indictment approximately one block from the location of the trial of this case.”

The order concluded by banning “reference by counsel for Mr. Trump in the presence of the jury panel or the trial jury to Mr. Trump’s alleged desire to testify or to the burdens that any absence on his part allegedly might spare, or might have spared, the Court or the City of New York.” Notably, it did not absolve Trump of the obligation to tell the court by today if he intends to attend the trial. (He does not, this is all for show.)

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And yet!

This afternoon Tacopina replied that his client will not, after all, be complying with the court’s April 10 order.

“Because the decision of the defendant, who is not required to appear as a civil litigant, will be made during the course of the trial, we are not yet in a position to advise the Court in this regard,” he writes. “However, we will inform the Court as soon as a decision is reached, particularly in light of the logistical concerns that will need to be addressed in coordination with the Secret Service, the Marshals Service, and the City of New York.”

Well, it’s a choice. Maybe not a great one but … we’ll find out next week.

Carroll v. Trump I [Docket via Court Listener]
Carroll v. Trump II [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

Topics

Alina Habba, Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll, Government, Joe Tacopina