Judge Defends Rejecting Trump’s Request For A Mistrial In E. Jean Carroll Case – HuffPost
Senior Reporter, HuffPost
A federal judge reaffirmed his rejection of a mistrial in the defamation case against former President Donald Trump after writer E. Jean Carroll was awarded $83.3 million in damages last month.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a 30-page decision supporting his rejection on Wednesday, saying Trump’s legal team had no “merit” when it made the request in court.
Trump’s attorney Alina Habba had argued for a mistrial during the case last month after Carroll said she had deleted death threats she received after going public with her rape allegations against Trump. Habba took the unusual step to call for the mistrial in court in front of the jury, claiming Carroll had destroyed evidence that should have been saved.
The Associated Press notes that lawyers generally call for mistrials when the jury is not present, and Kaplan ordered the jury to discount Habba’s request at the time he dismissed it.
“The motion made no sense,” Kaplan wrote in his explanation Wednesday, adding that Habba knew Carroll had deleted some emails for more than a year before her request. “Granting a mistrial would have been entirely pointless.”
The judge said that Habba’s questioning in court was “confusing” and that she had not taken any steps to try to recover the messages. He added that the missing threats were also likely more of a disadvantage to Carroll’s case rather than to Trump’s defense.
“With fewer examples to show, Ms. Carroll’s case for damages was weakened, and Mr. Trump benefitted as a result,” Kaplan wrote.
A jury awarded the massive damages in the lawsuit after Trump continued to attack Carroll as a “whack job” and a “fraud” even after a separate jury found him liable for defamation and sexual abuse in May 2023. That verdict resulted in $5 million in additional damages. Carroll had accused Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in 1996 and then defaming her when she came forward with her accusation.
Habba has vowed to appeal the $83.3 million penalty.
“It will not deter us. We will keep fighting,” the lawyer said at the time of the verdict. “And, I assure you, we didn’t win today, but we will win.”
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