Judge Threatens to Eject Trump From Carroll Trial After His Complaints

A Manhattan judge overseeing the trial in which the writer E. Jean Carroll has accused Donald J. Trump of defaming her warned the former president Wednesday that he would throw him out of the courtroom if he kept making comments that the jury could hear.

During a break after Ms. Carroll had spent the morning testifying about what happened after she accused Mr. Trump of raping her, one of her lawyers complained, out of the jury’s presence, that Mr. Trump had been overheard speaking at the defense table. He said “witch hunt” and “it was a con job,” loudly enough that jurors could hear, said Shawn Crowley, one of Ms. Carroll’s lawyers.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who had sparred all morning with Mr. Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba, over her objections to Ms. Carroll’s testimony, appeared to be losing his patience.

“Mr. Trump has a right to be present here,” Judge Kaplan said. “That right can be forfeited and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive, which is what has been reported to me, and if he disregards court orders.”

He then addressed the former president directly.

“Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial,” he said.

Mr. Trump, who had spent most of the morning shaking his head during Ms. Carroll’s testimony, threw up his hands.

“I would love it,” he said.

Judge Kaplan replied: “I understand you’re probably very eager for me to do that because you just can’t control yourself in these circumstances.”

Ms. Carroll, a former Elle magazine advice columnist, has accused Mr. Trump of raping her decades ago in a dressing room in the Bergdorf Goodman department store. He immediately denied her accusation, said he had never met her and accused her of inventing a story to sell her book. Since then, he has made dozens of posts on social media repeating his diatribes against her.

Last May, a jury awarded her about $2 million in damages for the assault and about $3 million for defamation claims based on an October 2022 post on Mr. Trump’s Truth Social website in which he again called her a liar and her accusation a hoax.

Mr. Trump did not testify in that trial or even attend the proceedings, but he said he wanted to attend this week’s trial and take the stand. He has been in the courtroom since it began on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the former president watched and listened as Ms. Carroll, 80, described how those statements affected her.

“He shattered my reputation,” Ms. Carroll said in the federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan as Mr. Trump sat at the defense table. Mr. Trump appeared engaged in the proceedings throughout the day, shaking his head and appearing to scoff during Ms. Carroll’s testimony and passing notes to his lawyers.

Several times, he looked at the jury, giving them a tight smile and, at one point, nodding in their direction. The jurors remained expressionless, taking notes and focusing their attention on Ms. Carroll and the lawyers questioning her.

In the trial this week, Ms. Carroll is seeking $10 million in damages for two statements he made as president in 2019, accusing her of lying about the assault.

Ms. Carroll, the author of five books, appeared regularly on programs like “Good Morning America” and the “Today” show before 2019, when she wrote a book that described the assault in a chapter that was published in New York magazine. Those appearances stopped after Mr. Trump accused her of lying and she was deluged with threats and cruel comments about her looks on social media and in her inbox, according to her lawyers.

“I was attacked,” Ms. Carroll said. “I was attacked on Twitter. I was attacked on Facebook. I was living in a new universe.”

During cross-examination, Ms. Habba, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, asked Ms. Carroll about her salary as a writer. Ms. Carroll said that in the 1990s, she was earning $400,000 a year writing for magazines. By 2018, she said, as falling ad revenue forced magazines to shrink their budgets, she was making $60,000 a year.

She received a $70,000 advance for her 2019 book, “What Do We Need Men For?” in which she accused Mr. Trump of assaulting her.

Ms. Habba had said in her opening statements that Ms. Carroll had been trying to raise her stature to promote the book and had sought media and public attention to get herself back in the limelight. When Ms. Carroll faced backlash from Mr. Trump’s supporters, she blamed the former president, Ms. Habba told the jury.

“You’re a journalist, correct?” Ms. Habba asked Ms. Carroll on Wednesday. “Couldn’t you have expected that some people would not believe your allegations?”

“Yes,” Ms. Carroll replied.

Ms. Habba also brought up the warm messages of support Ms. Carroll received from people in the wake of her accusations, citing her comment in a 2019 interview in USA Today that she was in a “cocoon of love.”

“It appears that you weren’t suffering too much emotional harm after his response, isn’t that fair to say?” Ms. Habba asked.

“That’s not fair to say,” Ms. Carroll said. “I experienced support which I found very encouraging, and on the other hand, horrible, menacing slime.”

Ms. Carroll is also seeking punitive damages, intended to punish Mr. Trump and keep him from making further attacks.

The threat of having to pay more damages to Ms. Carroll has not stopped Mr. Trump from commenting publicly about her. On Tuesday, he made 22 posts on his Truth Social site, including one that showed an image of Ms. Carroll on CNN with the caption, “Can you believe I have to defend myself against this woman’s fake story?!”

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump went after Judge Kaplan on Truth Social, calling him “abusive, rude and obviously not impartial.” He complained that the judge had denied his lawyer’s request to suspend court on Thursday, when the funeral for Mr. Trump’s mother-in-law, Amalija Knavs, will be held.

“I feel an obligation to be at every moment of this ridiculous trial because we have a seething and hostile Clinton-appointed judge, Lewis Kaplan, who suffers from a major case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” he wrote.

After the lunch break on Wednesday, a lawyer for Mr. Trump said that there had been “general hostility” toward the defense and asked Judge Kaplan to recuse himself.

“Denied,” Judge Kaplan responded.

The tension between the defense and the judge remained high throughout the day.

During cross-examination, Ms. Habba asked about a gun Ms. Carroll said she had inherited from her father and now keeps at her bedside out of fear.

When Ms. Carroll acknowledged she did not have a license for the weapon, Ms. Habba asked if she was aware that it was illegal to have a gun and no license.

Judge Kaplan interjected before Ms. Carroll could reply.

“Don’t even start,” he told the lawyer.