New York, Apr 14 (EFE).- The judge in the defamation case of the author E. Jean Carroll against former President Donald Trump in New York was inflexible in the face of various requests from his defense, including the one to postpone the trial that will begin this April 25, according to documents delivered to the court this Friday.
Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected two requests for a continuance from Trump’s lawyers, who insisted the former president will not get a fair trial because of the bad publicity of his recent indictment in Manhattan over irregular payments to a porn actress so she wouldn’t hurt his 2016 election campaign.
He also did not accept a new request from Trump’s team, delivered this Friday, to be able to access in advance some personal data of the jury candidates and to use a written questionnaire in the selection of the panel that will decide the verdict, and that supposes the first stage of the judicial process.
The lawyers pointed to the extensive media coverage of the Manhattan indictment, to no avail, cited the large number of Google searches on the subject and negative comments in related news stories, and recalled several celebrities convicted in jury trials. .
“(…) the increases in coverage just before jury selection in the criminal trials of Harvey Weinstein, Elizabeth Holmes and Ghislaine Maxwell pale in comparison” to those of this Trump case, they indicated, considering that this could create a “bias detrimental” on the panel.
In the proposed questionnaire, the questions for the potential juror included, among others, if you have “negative feelings” towards Trump, if you have followed the criminal investigations around him, if you are informed and through what means, if you are an “expert” in sexual violence due to studies or work, or if the Me Too movement has “affected his life”.
Aside from rejecting all those motions, Judge Kaplan handed a small victory to Trump’s defense in their claim to investigate the funding of Carroll’s lawsuit after it was disclosed yesterday that Reid Hoffman, a businessman and notable donor to the Democratic Party.
Kaplan said he would allow the defense to question Carroll about that funding under oath next Wednesday for no more than an hour, and he considered that it “could be relevant to the question of the credibility of the whistleblower.”
The former president’s defense insisted today, for the third time, that the trial be held at the end of May in another letter discussing the arguments of Carroll’s lawyers for maintaining the trial date, but the judge has not ruled on this new request.
Carroll, 79, accused Trump of rape in a book and a magazine article in 2019, something he denied by publicly calling her a liar and making derogatory comments about her appearance, after which the author decided to launch a legal battle against him for defamation.
At the end of 2022, Carroll added to that lawsuit a new charge for injuries derived from the alleged rape as a legal period opened in New York to seek civil justice in cases related to sexual violence that until then had been prescribed.
