Donald Trump testifies for less than 3 minutes in defamation trial, is rebuked by judge
- Donald Trump had only a few minutes in the witness box in E Jean Carroll’s ongoing defamation trial against him
- Carroll, 80, is seeking at least US$10 million over Trump’s June 2019 denials that he had raped her in the mid-1990s
He testified for under three minutes. But former US president Donald Trump still broke a judge’s rules on what he could tell a jury about writer E Jean Carroll’s sexual assault and defamation allegations, and he left the courtroom on Thursday bristling to the spectators: “This is not America”.
Because of the complex legal context of the case, the judge limited his lawyers to asking a handful of short questions, each of which could be answered yes or no – such as whether he had made his negative statements in response to an accusation and did not intend anyone to harm Carroll.
But Trump nudged past those limits.
“She said something that I considered to be a false accusation,” Trump said, later adding: “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and, frankly, the presidency”.
After Judge Lewis A Kaplan told jurors to disregard those remarks, Trump rolled his eyes as he stepped down from the witness box.
