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By Thomas Kika
Weekend Staff Writer
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A judge has set the parameters for what Donald Trump and his legal team cannot say to a jury during his second defamation trial brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.
Carroll, an author and advice columnist, has twice sued the former president for defamation after he said that her rape allegations against him, stemming from a New York City encounter in the mid-1990s, were false. In May, a jury ruled that Trump had sexually abused but not raped Carroll during the encounter and was liable for defamation, to the tune of $5 million in damages.
That ruling was in the second defamation case brought by Carroll—for comments Trump made in 2022. Her first suit, brought for comments he made in 2019 while president, is finally set to go to a damages trial on January 16, after the judge overseeing both cases, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, found him liable for defamation over the earlier comments as well.
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In addition, Kaplan previously ruled that Trump's liability from the earlier ruling would carry over to the new trial, greatly limiting the claims he and his legal team can make before a jury.
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The terms of these limitations were laid out in greater detail in a Tuesday order signed by Kaplan, a copy of which Newsweek has seen.
As spelled out in the order, Trump and his lawyers are precluded from claiming that Carroll's sexual abuse claims are false, calling into question Carroll's lawyers and their activities outside of court, highlighting the funding her legal pursuits have received, making claims about any of the DNA evidence, or highlighting Carroll's "past romantic relations, sexual disposition, and prior sexual experiences."
Newsweek reached out to Trump's office via email for comment.
Trump and his legal team have frequently tried to highlight the funding that Carroll and her team have received from billionaire Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and a noted Democratic Party donor, claiming that her lawsuits have been purely politically motivated. Similar claims have also been made about the political leanings of Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. These claims were previously barred from being presented to a jury in the first case, with Kaplan ruling that they were irrelevant to the substance of Carroll's claims.
Trump's 2019 comments at the heart of Carroll's lawsuit dismiss her allegations as false. He accused her of making them to sell copies of a book and of being a Democratic Party operative.
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