Former President of the United States Donald Trump should award huge damages to writer E. Jean Carroll for defamation and for denying that he sexually abused her in the tens of millions of dollars, her lawyer told the jury near the end of the trial that confronts both this Friday.
Trump's lawyer, on the other hand, stated that the former Elle magazine columnist does not deserve a cent, having obtained the spotlight without suffering any professional or emotional harm after the politician called her a liar.
Made up of seven men and two women, the jury in Manhattan federal court is expected to begin deliberating the case this Friday, the fifth day of the civil trial.
Carroll, who is 80, is seeking at least $10 million from Trump for defamation claims that occurred in June 2019, when he was in the White House and denied her allegations that he sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s in a store locker room. of Manhattan departments.
She said Trump's comments made her the target of 4 and a half years of continuous attacks, including death threats.
The 77-year-old former president accused Carroll of inventing the episode to increase sales of his memoirs and claims he had never heard of her.
He also attacked Carroll, calling her case a “witch hunt” and “scam.”
Another jury forced Trump to pay the writer $5 million due to a similar denial in October 2022, concluding that there had been defamation and sexual abuse.
Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan – who is not related to the judge – asked jurors to convict Trump for persistently lying about her client, destroying her reputation as a journalist.
“We all need to follow the laws,” Kaplan said.
“Donald Trump, however, acts as if these rules and laws simply do not apply to him.”
Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, countered by saying that it was the publication of excerpts from Carroll's memoir by New York magazine that caused the attacks, not Trump's denials.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Habba said. “Even if you believe Ms. Carroll that she truly feared for her safety because of the emails she received, she did not demonstrate what she needed to demonstrate: that President Trump was the reason she received them.”
Trump is trying to return to the White House in November, in a dispute with Democrat Joe Biden, the current president who defeated him in 2020.
The expectation is for a tight race, even with the 91 lawsuits against Trump, including two cases accusing him of trying to illegally reverse the result of the 2020 elections.
Trump left the courtroom during Roberta Kaplan's closing argument but returned as Habba, his lawyer, spoke.
He has tried to turn his legal challenges into campaign tools, saying he is a victim of biased prosecutors and a flawed justice system.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Luc Cohen in New York)
Source: CNN Brasil
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