Trump walks out of court during closing arguments in defamation trial
Al Jazeera
The unexpected walkout occurred when lawyer for E Jean Carroll asked jurors to decide how much Trump owes the plaintiff.
Former United States President Donald Trump stormed out of closing arguments at his defamation trial as a lawyer for E Jean Carroll urged a jury to award at least $24m in damages for the “storm of hate” caused by Trump.
Carroll, 80, is seeking at least $10m for Trump’s having defamed her in June 2019, when he was in the White House, by denying her claim that he had raped her in the mid-1990s. She said Trump’s comments caused her to be subjected to four and a half years of continuous attacks, including death threats.
In her closing arguments at the Manhattan federal court on Friday, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan urged jurors to punish Trump for persistently lying about her client, and destroying her reputation as a truth-telling journalist.
“We all have to follow the law,” Kaplan said. “Donald Trump, however, acts as if these rules and laws just do not apply to him.
“This trial is about getting him to stop, once and for all,” she added. “Now is the time to make him pay for it dearly.”
