Trump throws hands in air, says he’d ‘love it’ if judge booted him for ripping E. Jean Carroll during testimony
Donald Trump threw his hands in the air and said he’d “love it” if the judge at his New York defamation trial threw him out of court for loudly ripping sex abuse accuser E. Jean Carroll as she testified Wednesday.
The “Ask E. Jean” advice columnist’s lawyers twice complained that the former president was providing running commentary to his team within earshot of the jurors — including calling Carroll’s testimony “false” and grousing that “she now seems to have finally gotten her memory back.”
“Mr. Trump has the right to be present here. That right can be forfeited if he is disruptive … and if he disregards court orders,” Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan warned after first cautioning Trump, 77, to “keep his voice down” when talking to his attorneys.
“Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial. I understand you are very eager for me to do that,” Kaplan said.
“I would love it,” Trump taunted, cutting the judge off as he theatrically thrust his hands in the air.
“I know you would,” the judge shot back. “You just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently.”
“You can’t either,” Trump responded.
Carroll, who is seeking $10 million in damages from Trump, was the first witness to take the stand in her case against the real estate tycoon — coming face to face with him for the first time while testifying in court.
The GOP presidential candidate returned to the Lower Manhattan courthouse Wednesday morning — fresh off a 2024 campaign event in New Hampshire — after attending jury selection and opening statements on the day prior.
He was seen with odd red marks on his right hand as he waved while leaving Trump Tower, but they had mysteriously disappeared by the time he got to the courtroom.
During an earlier break in testimony — when the jury was out of the room — Carroll’s lawyer Shawn Crowley told Kaplan that Trump was “loudly saying things” that the jury might be able to hear.
“I’m going to ask that Mr. Trump take special care to keep his voice down when conferring with counsel so that the jury does not overhear,” the judge said in response.
But Crowley brought the issue up again before a lunch break, claiming Trump had not heeded Kaplan’s instruction and was still loudly muttering during Carroll’s testimony.
“He said, ‘It is a witch hunt,’ ‘It really is a con job,’” Crowley claimed.
Trump later ripped Kaplan in a rant on his platform Truth Social that spanned five posts, calling the judge “totally biased and [a] hostile person.”
Michael Madaio, one of Trump’s attorneys, made an oral motion after the lunch break for Kaplan to recuse himself over his alleged “hostility” toward Trump.
Kaplan rejected the request and the trial resumed, with Trump lawyer Alina Habba grilling Carroll on cross-examination for about two hours. Habba asked a series of questions that appeared designed to portray the magazine writer as someone who sought publicity and always loved the spotlight – which only grew brighter after she accused Trump of raping her.
Carroll in June 2019 went public with her accusation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room in 1996.
She sued Trump for defamation after he denied ever knowing her and said she wasn’t his “type” — in a statement to reporters from the White House.
In May, a jury in a separate case found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages.
“I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me. And when I wrote about it, he said it never happened, he lied, and he shattered my reputation,” the 80-year-old writer said as she began her testimony in the current case Wednesday.
Trump — wearing his customary dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie — glared at his accuser from just a few feet away as she continued, “I am here to get my reputation back and to stop him from telling lies about me.”
Carroll said Trump’s lies have destroyed her reputation as a trusted advice columnist and “ended the world” she lived in.
“Now I’m known as a liar, a fraud and a whack job,” she said.
“To have the president of the United States, one of the most powerful persons on Earth, calling me a liar for three days and saying I’m a liar 26 times — I counted them — it ended the world that I had been living in,” Carroll said.
Before Trump’s comments, Carroll used to receive some 200 emails per month asking for relationship advice, and after his statements, that number dwindled to just eight per month, she claimed.
Following the remarks by the 45th president, Carroll said, she received horrific death threats and messages from online trolls.
She recalled being in a hotel room when she received the first death threat on June 21, 2019 — the same day Trump publicly denied her allegations.
“I thought I was going to get shot,” Carroll said, describing how she panicked as she struggled to close the curtains in the hotel room that day.
Jurors were shown about a dozen hateful messages the New York journalist received, including one saying “I hope you die soon” and another saying she should die by “execution” or “firing squad.”
Carroll says she still lives in fear and even looks over her shoulder when she pulls her car into the garage after buying groceries.
And to this day, she receives nasty messages — “hundreds a day.”
When Trump said she was “not my type,” Carroll said he really meant “I’m too ugly to assault” — a sentiment which she said made it hard to get up in the morning.
“I know I’m old. I know I’m 80,” Carroll said. “I know I’m not a pretty young woman, but it makes it tough to go on with the day.”
But near the end of her testimony Wednesday, a defiant Carroll said she went public because she “wanted people to know that a woman can speak up and win.”
“I don’t want to be quiet,” Carroll told the jury. “I’m 80. It’s not right to make women quiet. It has been going on for too long.”
Trump slumped deeper into his seat when he heard Habba tell the court she still still had roughly 30 more minutes-worth of questioning for Carroll on Thursday morning.
He has said that he can’t be in court Thursday because he’ll be attending the funeral for Amalijia Knavs, his mother-in-law and the mother of his wife Melania Trump.
But in Trump’s Truth tirade he said “I feel an obligation to be at every moment of this ridiculous trial.”
Additional reporting by Kyle Schnitzer
