Donald Trump is set to face a second defamation trial in Manhattan federal court — where jurors deciding how much he owes rape accuser E. Jean Carroll will hear him on tape bragging about grabbing women “by the p—y.”
The infamous recording of Trump, 77, boasting to then “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush that women “allow” him to grope them because he’s a “star” is among the evidence set to be played at the one-week trial, which will kick off with jury selection at around 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Jurors in a separate trial last May found there to be more than a 50% chance — or a “preponderance of the evidence” — that Trump sexually abused Carroll inside a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room in 1996.
“The jury could find that Mr. Trump was prepared to admit privately to sexual assaults eerily similar to that alleged by Ms. Carroll,” District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote last week to explain why he was allowing the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape to be shown in court.
The judge has already found Trump liable for defaming the 80-year-old “Ask E. Jean” columnist by falsely claiming in June 2019 — using what the court called “actual malice” — that she accused him “to get publicity.”
All that’s left to decide now is how much Trump must pay.
Carroll is asking for more than $10 million in compensatory and punitive damages — on top of $5 million that jurors at the previous trial already ordered the ex-president to cough up after finding him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
Trump is expected to attend at least part of the proceedings, though he was not in court for the last trial and is not required to show because it is not a criminal case.
His camp has yet to say whether he’ll take the stand as a witness — but if he does, he won’t be allowed to repeat his prior claims that he does not know Carroll, the judge has ruled.
Trump and his lawyers cannot deny in court that he sexually assaulted the writer, according to Kaplan — who on Saturday issued a cryptic warning for what might happen if the 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner flouts the order.
“The court will take such measures as it finds appropriate to avoid circumvention of its rulings and of the law,” Kaplan wrote.
Kaplan was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994 and has presided over several newsworthy cases in nearly 30 years on the bench, including the trials of Al Qaeda operatives and members of the Gambino crime family.
Most recently, he served as the judge in the trial of fallen crypto prince Sam Bankman-Fried, whom a jury convicted in November of stealing $10 billion from users of his crypto exchange and lying to lenders and investors.
He was also the judge in the first E. Jean Carroll v. Trump civil case.
Trump took to social media on Sunday to rip Kaplan as “another Trump hating Judge,” and “the terrible, biased, irrationally angry Clinton-appointed Judge in the Bergdorf’s Hoax.”
“This Judge has been ruthlessly unfair from the first day of Crooked Joe Biden’s Election Interfering Witch Hunt,” he wrote in a Truth Social post.
At a separate $370 million civil fraud trial in state court — which was heard by a judge rather than a jury — Trump was allowed to deliver uninterrupted rants during his November testimony, insulting the judge and calling New York Attorney General Letitia James a “hack.”