NY.- Former President Donald Trump on Sunday turned down his last chance to testify in a civil trial in which a columnist accused him of raping her in the fitting room of a luxury department store in 1996.
Trump, the Republican candidate for president in 2024, had until 5 p.m. this Sunday, by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, to submit a request to testify. Nothing was presented.
It was not a surprise. Trump failed to appear once during the two-week trial in Manhattan, where writer E. Jean Carroll testified for several days, repeating claims she first made publicly in a 2019 memoir. She is seeking compensatory damages and millions of dollars in penalties.
The jury also saw lengthy excerpts from a videotaped deposition in October in which Trump vehemently denied that he raped Carroll or actually knew her.
Without Trump’s testimony, the lawyers were scheduled to present closing arguments on Monday, with deliberations likely to begin Tuesday.