Donald Trump trial: Judge scolds Trump for ‘inappropriate’ post on Carroll’s suit donor
Kaelan Deese
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Former President Donald Trump‘s attorney was scolded Wednesday by the judge presiding over E. Jean Carroll‘s defamation trial after Trump posted to Truth Social that his rape accuser “tried to hide” a wealthy political donor funding her lawsuit.
Carroll, the former columnist who brought her lawsuit against Trump in November, said that Trump defamed her when he called her allegations a “Hoax and a lie” when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s.
DONALD TRUMP TRIAL: DEFENSE DINGS CARROLL’S RAPE STORY FOR ‘LACK OF DETAILS’
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On Truth Social Wednesday morning, Trump posted that Carroll’s legal team is being “financed by a big political donor that they tried to hide.”
He made a second post about Carroll, saying, “She said there was a dress, using the ol’ Monica Lewinsky ‘stuff,’ then she didn’t want to produce it.”
Before the nine-member jury entered the courtroom to hear testimony, Carroll’s attorney read aloud parts of the social media post and claimed they violated the judge’s orders against “comments about lawyers and one about DNA,” according to Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan.
“These are out-of-court comments obviously,” said defense attorney Joe Tacopina, but U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan interjected, saying, “What you’re trying to do is to get away from a statement by your client, a public statement, that on the face of it seems entirely inappropriate.”
“We’re getting into an area in which your client may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability, and I think you know what I mean,” the judge added.
Tacopina said he would address the posts with Trump but also claimed that Roberta Kaplan had engaged in rule violations, citing a Daily Mail article that reported Kaplan’s office staged a mock trial in which two out of three mock juries found Trump guilty.
Trump and his counsel have recently pounced on the revelation that billionaire Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn who has donated to millions of Democrats and liberal causes, donated for Carroll’s legal battle.
Although the judge did not let that information be known to the jury, Trump sought to raise the issue on social media.
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Hoffman denied any claims of secrecy in a LinkedIn post last week, saying, “I’ve never taken any steps to hide the financial support that I have provided to this lawsuit after it started.”
Trump is presently not slated to testify during the trial, which is expected to last between five and 10 days.