President Trump gave a short but effective testimony in Federal Court at Manhattan on Thursday during an ongoing civil defamation trial, where a jury is hearing evidence to decide what damages he must pay the writer E. Jean Carroll for insulting her.  

“It’s not America.” Mr. Trump said as he exited the courtroom after he had spoken for less than three minutes. He repeated, “Not America. This is not America.” 

The presiding judge, Lewis Kaplan, gave strict orders restricting what Mr. Trump could say, and what questions his attorney could ask him. Unlike during his civil fraud trial at State Supreme Court, where Mr. Trump was allowed to address the court at length, the federal judge showed far less leniency. As soon as Mr. Trump tried to embellish his answers, Judge Kaplan struck the sentences from the record. Still, though Mr. Trump was muzzled, his message came across, loud and clear.  

Ms. Carroll, a former columnist at Elle magazine and published book author, sued Mr. Trump twice after accusing him of raping her in 1996 in a dressing room on the lingerie floor of Bergdorf Goodman, the luxury Manhattan department store. The current trial stems from her first lawsuit, which was delayed by appeals for years. In November 2022, Ms. Carroll filed a second lawsuit, Carroll II, after New York State amended its Adult Survivors Act. The new legislation permitted alleged victims of sexual offenses with expired statutes of limitations to file civil suits during a one-year period.  . 

Carroll II went to trial in May 2023. The same judge, Lewis Kaplan, presided over the case. Mr. Trump did not attend that trial.He publicly denied the rape allegations, though he did not deny them in court, under oath.

Instead of rape, the jury found that Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll in 1996, and that he defamed her in October 2022 by denying their encounter ever took place, effectively branding the journalist as a liar. The jury awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million in combined damages for both the sexual assault and the defamation. 

Thursday’s trial addresses the first lawsuit, in which Ms. Carroll alleges Mr. Trump defamed her in June 2019, after New York Magazine published an excerpt from her book “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.” The excerpt details how Ms. Carroll ran into Mr. Trump at Bergdorf Goodman, where, she wrote, he led her into a dressing room on the lingerie floor and raped her. 

Mr. Trump, who was president when the excerpt was published, immediately called the accusation, “totally false,” and fired back that Ms. Carroll was stirring up publicity to sell her new book.

Ms. Carroll, who is 80 years old, claims that his statements “shattered” her reputation, and incited death threats and harassment from Trump supporters which continue to this day. Her attorney, Shawn Crowley, said in her opening statement that Ms. Carroll sleeps with her father’s loaded gun next to her bed. Ms. Carroll seeks $10 million in reputational damages, as well as punitive damages. She wants Mr. Trump to stop insulting her in his social media posts and in news conferences.  

Mr. Trump has been busy when it comes to insulting Ms. Carroll. Most famously, he called her “a wack job” during a notorious CNN town hall. Leading up to the current trial, he kept busy by reposting old, sexually salacious tweets by Ms. Carroll, and accusing her of naming her cat “Vagina.”

The trial was paused on Monday due to a Covid scare among the jury members, and resumed on Thursday, when Mr. Trump, who had been eager to testify, finally got his chance to defend himself in court. 

Before the former president spoke, and before the jury returned from their lunch break, Judge Kaplan grilled defense attorney Alina Habba. “There will be no open ended questions,” the judge ordered, adding that “I want to know everything he is going to say.” 

The judge explained, again, that the previous trial established that Mr. Trump did “in fact sexually abuse Ms. Carroll by forcibly and without consent inserting his fingers into her vagina.” It also established that “Ms. Carroll did not make up her claim of forcible sexual abuse,” and that Mr. Trump’s statements were defamatory, and he made them, knowing “they were false.” The judge warned the defense that Mr. Trump could not dispute or undermine “those determinations.” 

“I don’t know who this woman is, I never met this woman.” Mr. Trump loudly protested from the defense table, when the jury was not present.

“Mr. Trump,” the judge reprimanded him, “you are interrupting the proceeding, which is not allowed.” 

Alina Habba argued that her client wished to express that he wasn’t “defaming” Ms. Carroll with his statements, instead he was “defending himself.” 

“Those are not mutually exclusive,” the judge responded. He agreed to three prestated yes-or-no questions. 

“Do you stand by your testimony in your deposition?” was the first question Ms. Habba asked. 

“100 percent, yes,” Mr. Trump answered.  

Ms. Carroll’s attorneys may have caused themselves a setback in the morning, when they played a tape of Mr. Trump’s deposition in a Carroll case from October 2022. “This ridiculous situation is a hoax,” Mr. Trump said in the deposition. He compared the “hoax” to the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” referring to the Robert Mueller investigation into allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to undermine Hillary Clinton. He also compared it to the “Ukraine, Ukraine hoax,” another political whirlwind sparked by a leaked phone call between Mr. Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and finally, the mail in ballots  “hoax.” Mr. Trump admitted that he himself mailed in ballots in previous elections, but added, “I do not know what happens to it, once you mail it in.” 

During the deposition, Mr. Trump also repeatedly denied the overall allegations. He stated clearly, and often, that he did not remember meeting Ms. Carroll, who he had earlier said was “not my type.” He insisted that he did not know her, even when he was shown a black and white photograph from the 1990s, in which he, his then-wife, Marla Maples, Ms. Carroll and her husband John Johnson all wait on line to enter a charity event. By confirming this testimony, Mr. Trump in effect, told the jury that he deemed himself innocent.  

“Did you deny the allegations to defend yourself?” Ms. Habba asked next. 

“Yes I did, that’s exactly right,” Trump responded, adding that he responded to something he considered “a false accusation.” The judge struck the second part of the answer from the record.

“Did you ever instruct anyone to hurt Ms. Carroll?” Ms. Habba concluded. 

“No,” Mr. Trump answered, “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and frankly the presidency.” The judge again struck everything except the No from the record.  

Ms. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge,   briefly cross examined the former president, asking only if this was the first trial with Ms. Carroll he had attended. Mr. Trump replied, “Yes.” Ms. Habba quickly redirected her client to state that he was represented by counsel in the previous trial, insinuating that the decision not to testify had been advised by his previous attorneys. 

With that the defense rested its case. Earlier in the day, Ms. Habba had landed another victory when she called former television newswoman  Carol Martin as a witness. She had subpoenaed the longtime friend of Ms. Carroll’s, to whom the writer dedicated her infamous book. Ms. Martin was one of the friends who Ms. Carroll claims she contemporaneously told about Mr. Trump’s alleged sexual assault. 

Citing personal text messages of Ms. Martin, the defense attorney got the confidant to confess that she believed at times, Ms. Carroll’s “narcissism had run amok.” Even worse, Ms. Martin  admitted writing that, Ms. Carroll was “a drug addict and the drug is herself,” and that she “likes the crown.”             

Though Ms. Martin insisted that she was not suspicious of her friend’s motives, she testified that Ms. Carroll did, at times, seem to enjoy the new lifestyle, the “attention”, and was “loving the adulation.” 

During cross examination by Ms. Carroll’s attorney, Ms. Martin testified that she was concerned for her and her family’s safety after the allegations against Mr. Trump had been publicized.  “The climate in the country felt dangerous to me,” Ms. Martin said. 

She tried to justify calling Ms. Carroll a “drug addict” by stating she used words in a rather “passionate” way. But the comparison hung in the air like the lingering smoke after a wildfire.   

Attorneys for Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump are scheduled to make closing arguments on Friday morning, after which the jury will begin to deliberate. A verdict could come as early as Friday afternoon, or next week.