But Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina had demurred when asked several times by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan whether Trump would testify, leaving the option open.
On Tuesday, however, Tacopina informed Kaplan that Trump had decided against taking the witness stand.
The jury, however, will hear from Trump, albeit not live or in person. An attorney for Carroll said she expects to play about 45 minutes of a videotaped deposition of Trump for jurors.
Jurors heard from a variety of witness on Tuesday, including a friend of Carroll’s, Lisa Birnbach, who testified that Carroll called her about five minutes after the alleged incident at Bergdorf’s and, “breathless” and “hyperventilating,” told Birnbach that Trump had attacked her. Jurors also heard from a woman named Jessica Leeds, who has accused Trump of sexually assaulting her on an airplane in the late 1970s.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Darbhanga: A Congress leader in Bihar on Tuesday filed a petition before a court accusing Union Home Minister Amit Shah of spreading communal tensions and tarnishing the party’s reputation.
The petition was filed before Chief Judicial Magistrate, Darbhanga, by Pratibha Singh, who is the Congress’ in charge of Hayaghat assembly seat.
The petitioner has assailed an election speech of Shah, delivered on April 25 in Karnataka where assembly polls will be held on May 10.
The petitioner has taken exception to Shah’s statement that the state will be “afflicted with riots” if the Congress, shown as having the upper hand in poll surveys, formed the next government in Karnataka, which is currently ruled by the BJP.
The petitioner has contended that the statement has cast aspersions on the Congress and triggered communal tension.
The court has fixed May 4 as the next date of hearing in the matter.
“Trump was almost twice her size,” Crowley said to the jury. “He held down her arm, pulled down her tights and then he sexually assaulted her.”
Trump, who isn’t required to appear at the proceedings, didn’t attend the first day of the trial. His lawyer, Joe Tacopina, sought to portray Carroll’s claim as a “sick story” while also trying to reassure jurors that they could side with his client even if they dislike him.
“You can hate Donald Trump. It’s OK,” Tacopina told jurors. “But there’s a time and a secret place for that. It’s called a ballot box. Not here, in a court of law.”
“While no one is above the law, no one is also beneath the law,” he continued. “Politicians don’t make this country great, jurors do.”
Carroll, Tacopina argued, was motivated by money and by politics. He questioned her claim that no shoppers or employees were around to witness the incident in the department store, and he emphasized that she couldn’t recall certain details, most notably the precise timing of the alleged attack.
“You learned that E. Jean Carroll can’t tell you the date. She can’t tell you the month. She can’t tell you the season. She can’t even tell you the year,” he said.
“Evidence will tell you that E. Jean Carroll can’t do any of those things because the story isn’t true.”
To combat some of those arguments, Crowley emphasized two main points in her opening statements: that Carroll’s account is corroborated by two friends she told contemporaneously and by former Bergdorf Goodman employees who can testify to physical attributes of the store at that time, and that Trump’s alleged assault of Carroll is part of a pattern. More than two dozen women have accused him of sexual misconduct.
Two other women who have accused Trump of sexual assault, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stynoff, are set to testify, and Carroll’s attorneys have received permission from the judge to use the “Access Hollywood” tape — in which Trump boasts on a hot mic that “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” adding, “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything” — as evidence at trial.
Trump’s lawyer, Tacopina, dismissed the significance of the tape, calling it a “lewd conversation from 20 years ago.” The tape was recorded in 2005 and became public in 2016.
“It’s foolish, but it’s locker room talk,” he said. “It’s not an admission.”
Crowley also seized on a statement Trump made in disputing Carroll’s claims that Carroll is “not my type!”
First, Crowley told the jury, “we all know what that means: He was saying she was too ugly to assault.”
Later in her remarks, she also argued that his comment was not only offensive but also a lie. Describing a portion of his videotaped deposition that Carroll’s lawyers intend to show the jury, Crowley showed jurors a black and white photograph of Trump with Carroll.
“When Trump was shown this photograph at his deposition late last year, he looked at it, he pointed to it, unprompted, and he said, ‘It’s Marla! Yeah, it’s Marla, my wife,’” Crowley said, raising her voice.
“He mistook her for Marla Maples, his second wife, a former model, who he admitted was exactly his type.”
The trial is expected to last between one and two weeks, and testimony is set to begin Wednesday. While Trump isn’t expected to attend the trial in coming days, the judge nevertheless offered an instruction that appeared aimed at the absent defendant.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who in court filings took issue with Trump’s recent comments urging his supporters to protest criminal charges against him, advised the lawyers to warn their clients against making remarks that “inspire violence.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
And, of course, a civil verdict against Trump would add to his avalanche of legal troubles as he is seeking to regain the presidency while under indictment in an unrelated case and facing the possibility of additional criminal charges in several other investigations.
The trial is also risky for Carroll, who must convince a jury to believe her accusation against an incredibly high-profile defendant for an incident that allegedly occurred nearly 30 years ago and lacked any eyewitnesses.
According to Carroll, one night in either late 1995 or early 1996, she bumped into Trump while she was leaving Bergdorf Goodman. He recognized her, she said, because they had met once before and “had long traveled in the same New York City media circles.” Telling her that he was at the store to buy a present for “a girl,” Trump asked Carroll for her advice, and after the two discussed a few ideas, Trump suggested visiting the lingerie department, according to the lawsuit.
There, on the counter, they saw a lilac gray see-through bodysuit, and the two teased each other about which one of them should try it on, the lawsuit says. According to Carroll, Trump then “grabbed” her arm, “maneuvered” her to the dressing room and closed the door. There were no attendants or other shoppers nearby, Carroll said.
Once inside the dressing room, Trump pushed her up against the wall, bumping her head and “putting his mouth on her lips,” according to Carroll. After she pushed him back, she said, he “seized both of her arms,” pushed her again and then “jammed his hand under her coatdress and pulled down her tights.”
After unzipping his pants, “Trump then pushed his fingers around Carroll’s genitals and forced his penis inside of her,” according to the lawsuit.
After breaking free by raising up her knee and pushing him off, she said she ran out of Bergdorf’s and immediately called a friend, Lisa Birnbach, and told her about the incident. “He raped you,” Birnbach said, according to Carroll. Birnbach encouraged her to call the police, but “still in shock and reluctant to think of herself as a rape victim, Carroll did not want to speak to the police,” the lawsuit says.
Several days later, Carroll says she disclosed the events to another friend, Carol Martin. Martin advised Carroll to tell no one, advice she says she took.
Carroll’s attorneys have indicated they likely will call both Birnbach and Martin to testify. Both women backed up her account in media interviews shortly after Carroll went public with her claims in 2019.
Trump, for his part, denies the entire episode. He said in 2019 that he had “never met this person in my life” and that she was manufacturing stories about him for the purpose of selling a book in which she detailed the alleged assault. Last year, he repeated the denials on his social media site and again accused her of promoting a “hoax,” adding that, “while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!”
In court filings, Trump’s attorneys have suggested that his defense may include questioning the plausibility of Carroll’s claim that there were no customers or staff around to witness the incident, drilling into the notion that she can’t pinpoint the date when the attack allegedly occurred and arguing that Carroll is politically and financially motivated.
Lawyers for Carroll and Trump declined to comment.
Carroll is suing him for sexual assault under the Adult Survivors Act, a 2022 New York law that gave a one-year window beginning in November of that year for people to sue their alleged assailants even if the statute of limitations had expired, which it had in Carroll’s case. In addition to the sexual-assault claim, Carroll is suing Trump in this week’s trial for defamation over his 2022 comments.
In a separate lawsuit, she is also suing him for defamation regarding his 2019 comments; the trial for that case is delayed pending a ruling on whether Trump can be sued personally for comments he made while he was president.
Civil lawsuits arising from sexual assaults are not uncommon. (Trump is not even the first president to be sued for sexual misconduct: Paula Jones famously sued Bill Clinton during his presidency for sexual harassment in a case that reached the Supreme Court.) But the Trump trial will require highly unusual measures. Perhaps most significantly, the judge presiding over the case, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, has ordered an anonymous jury — meaning the names of the jurors will not be disclosed to the public or to Carroll, Trump or their attorneys — due to “a very strong risk that jurors will fear harassment.”
In his order regarding the unusual step of protecting the juror’s identities, Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, cited a series of alleged threats of violence by Trump, his attacks on jurors in other cases, his encouragement of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and his statement urging his supporters to protest what he predicted would be his arrest in connection with the district attorney’s investigation.
In another twist, Trump has indicated that he probably won’t attend the trial. In a court filing, his lawyers cited the “logistical burdens” of him appearing in court due to his Secret Service protection, a wrinkle the judge rejected as an adequate reason for failing to appear, while noting that he has no legal obligation to either attend or testify.
In other ways, however, the case is typical of sexual assault lawsuits. Such cases are commonly brought many years after the incident in question, because victims often take a long time to come to terms with what has happened to them, and often center on a situation witnessed by no one but the plaintiff and the defendant, said Peter Saghir, a lawyer who represented Anthony Rapp in his battery trial against Kevin Spacey, whom Rapp accused of making a “sexual advance” on him in 1986. (A jury found Spacey not liable for battery.)
“These cases are so difficult because these events are almost always unwitnessed,” Saghir said. “I’m sure Trump is going to be arguing, clearly if I raped someone, why wasn’t she screaming? Why wasn’t she yelling? There’s no video. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. It’s usually one person’s word against the other word.”
In Carroll’s case, he noted, she does have corroboration from the two friends she says she told contemporaneously.
Carroll’s case is also likely to hinge on her own testimony and whether a jury believes her story, said Jordan Merson, a lawyer who represents five women suing Bill Cosby for sexual abuse. “It seems like Trump’s legal team is going after her credibility, so her cross examination when she’s on the witness stand is going to be a very important part of the case.”
Merson noted that cross examination for a sexual assault victim can be “very difficult” because the plaintiff is being challenged on something they typically find painful to talk about under even the most inviting circumstances.
If the jury does believe Carroll’s story about the alleged rape, Merson said the defamation claim may significantly boost any monetary award she is given. Carroll is seeking unspecified damages — and for Trump to retract the statement he made about her on his social media site.
“Juries tend to be very sympathetic to survivors of sexual abuse, especially if there’s any type of verbal disparagement thereafter,” Merson said. “If the jury finds for Ms. Carroll, you could be looking at a very significant damages award,” he said. “Many millions of dollars.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday slammed External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for accusing former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of politicising the issue of Indians stranded in Sudan, saying it was an “appalling response” to a “genuine appeal” for assistance.
The Opposition party lashed out at the Modi government over the issue, saying the problem with most of ministers is that they are so eager to prove their loyalty to “their master and be his voice” that they have forgotten that they are sworn to certain responsibilities.
The issue began with Siddaramaiah posting a series of tweets saying “it is reported that 31 people from Karnataka belonging to Hakki Pikki tribe, are stranded in Sudan which is troubled by civil war” and the government is yet to initiate action to bring them back.
The former Karnataka chief minister urged the prime minister’s office, the union home minister’s office and the ministry of external affairs to “immediately intervene” and ensure the safe return of the Indians.
Siddaramaiah also said the ‘Hakki Pikkis’ in Sudan are left stranded without food since the last few days.
He said the BJP government should immediately open diplomatic discussions and reach out to international agencies to ensure the well-being of Hakki Pikkis.
Jaishankar then came down hard on Siddaramaiah and tweeted, “Simply appalled at your tweet! There are lives at stake; don’t do politics.”
“Since the fighting started on April 14th, the Embassy of India in Khartoum has been continuously in touch with most Indian Nationals and PIOs in Sudan,” Jaishankar tweeted.
“Their details and locations cannot be made public for security reasons. Their movement is constrained by fierce fighting that is ongoing,” he added.
Jaishankar said plans regarding them have to take into account a “very complicated” security scenario and that the Indian embassy in Sudan is in constant touch with the Ministry of External Affairs over the situation in that country.
“It is grossly irresponsible of you to politicise their situation. No electoral goal justifies endangering Indians abroad,” he said.
Assembly elections in Karnataka are due next month.
Hitting back at Jaishankar, Siddaramaiah said, “Since you are the External Affairs Minister @DrSJaishankar I have appealed you for help. If you are busy getting appalled please point us to the person who can help us bring our people back.”
Tagging Jaishankar’s tweet accusing Siddaramaiah of politicising the issue, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh tweeted, “A most appalling response from the External Affairs minister to a former CM with a genuine appeal. This level of nastiness from a man I have known so very well… who has developed new loyalties and who wants to show that in whatever he says and does.”
Ramesh added that he will not say anything on Jaishankar’s past.
Asked about the sharp Twitter exchange between Jaishankar and Siddaramaiah, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said, “I am very shocked at the reaction that came. Our leader Siddaramaiah gave him an apt reply when he said that “if he is done with appalling, he needs to start assisting citizens’.”
The problem with people in this government is that for every little thing they get so riled up, she said.
“He (Siddaramaiah) put out a message seeking the assistance of India’s foreign minister to safely ensure the passage of citizens from Karnataka struck in Sudan, what was so riling about it. The problem with most of these ministers, who are so eager to prove their loyalty to their master and be his voice, is that they have forgotten that they are sworn to certain responsibilities, they are sworn to accountability,” Shrinate said.
“This was nothing about politicising this was about seeking help. You (Jaishankar) may be helpless, you may be good for nothing and that is who you are. You have decided to turn a two-rupee troll, good for you, do all you want to do, ensure the safe passage of citizens back in India,” she said.
Tagging a tweet on the Siddaramaiah-Jaishankar Twitter exchange, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said, “On this issue Dr S Jaishankar’s response surprises me. He knows that public representatives frequently convey to Govt appeals from constituents in distress. He has helped me with several during Covid. Why was Siddaramaiah ji’s request ‘appalling’?”
Sudan has been witnessing deadly fighting between the country’s army and a paramilitary group for the last five days that has reportedly left around 100 people dead.
Meanwhile, government sources said on Wednesday said India is coordinating closely with various countries to ensure the safety and security of Indian nationals in violence-hit Sudan.
Islamabad: Pakistani police on Thursday arrested former interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed from his home for accusing ex-president Asif Ali Zardari of plotting to kill former prime minister Imran Khan.
An ally of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, Ahmed is the chief of Awami Muslim League (AML).
His nephew Sheikh Rashid Shafique said that the AML chief was arrested from his home in a private housing society in Islamabad.
The former minister was arrested by Islamabad police in the early hours of Thursday in connection with remarks he made against former president Zardari, accusing him of hatching a “murder plot to eliminate PTI chief Imran Khan”.
Sheikh Rashid was later presented before the court of Judicial Magistrate Omar Shabbir who granted the police two-day physical remand of the AML chief.
The police had requested his eight-day remand for investigation.
Sheikh Rashid was arrested on a police complaint filed by Raja Inayat-ur-Rehman, a vice president of PPP Rawalpindi Division, wherein he said that the AML chief, in a television interview on January 27, alleged that Pakistan People’s Party co-chairman Zardari got the assistance of some terrorists to kill Khan.
Khan also in a television address on January 27 had alleged that Zardari was behind a fresh assassination plot a “plan C” and a terror group had been engaged for the purpose. He offered no evidence to back up his accusation.
Sheikh Rashid in fact had repeated what Imran Khan had said in his television address.
Zardari rejected the allegations and also sent a legal notice to Khan to apologize and take back the accusations or a case of damages would be filed against him.
According to a video clip of the arrested leader, he alleged that police ransacked his house and thrashed domestic staffers while attempting to arrest him. He also vowed to challenge his arrest in the high court.
He also alleged that some (personnel) used ladders to enter his house. He went on to say that he had been arrested despite getting relief from the Islamabad High Court.
He claimed that lawyer Mian Tahir had secured his bail and went on to allege that Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah was behind the incident.
Reacting to the arrest, Khan said: “Never in our history have we had such a biased, vindictive caretaker government appointed by totally discredited the ECP (Election Commission of Pakistan). The question is: can Pak afford a street movement which we are being pushed towards at a time when we have been bankrupted by imported government?”
The FIR filed against the AML leader claimed that Ahmed’s statement was made as part of a conspiracy to defame the former president and create a permanent threat to his family.
“He wants to create conflict and enmity between two groups PPP and PTI with this fabricated and baseless conspiracy so that the peace of the country can be disturbed,” it added.
Islamabad Police had on Wednesday summoned Ahmed to appear before it today in connection with the case. However, the Islamabad High Court suspended the notice.
The court also issued notices to the Islamabad police chief and asked him to nominate a senior officer who could apprise the high court of the facts related to the case. The former interior minister had claimed that he had “inside information of the murder conspiracy” and that the former president had allegedly hired “assassins to kill Imran Khan”.
In the petition, Sheikh Rashid challenged the notice issued to him by the local police and dubbed the notice as contradictory to different provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code. Further hearing has been adjourned until February 6.
Sheikh Rashid served as interior minister when Khan was prime minister and claims that he has served 16 times as minister in various governments.
His arrest comes amid a raft of legal moves against PTI leaders and their allies. Last week, PTI’s senior leader Fawad Chaudhry was arrested for allegedly making threats against election commission members’ families. He was later released on bail. A sedition case was filed against former PTI lawmaker Shandana Gulzar Khan.
