Trump’s Defamation Trial Delayed Due to COVID; Possible Testimony on Wednesday

As I’m sure you know, Tuesday, Jan 22th is the NH Primary.

At the same time, Trump was scheduled to be in court due to Judge Lewis Kaplan on Monday sending an ill juror home, suggesting the juror get a Covid test.

Curious timing.

But that was changed last minute, but not before creating an uproar from Republicans on X.

Many were calling this attempted election interference. You be the judge.

This is blatant election interference!

Joe Biden and his Democrat cronies are the true threats to democracy!

TRUMP 2024! https://t.co/LnBmYxa5ud

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) January 22, 2024

ABC News reports:

Former President Donald Trump is on trial this week in New York City to determine whether he will have to pay former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll additional damages for defaming her in 2019 when he denied her allegations of sexual abuse.

But they changed schedule last minute. ABC News continues…

Donald Trump’s defamation damages trial, which was adjourned Monday morning due to COVID-19 concerns, will resume Wednesday.

Judge Lewis Kaplan had originally said court would resume on Tuesday, but has now pushed that back a day.

“This Court functioned all the way through the worst of the COVID pandemic,” Judge Kaplan said this morning before court was adjourned. “We conducted over a hundred jury trials right through the lockdowns and everything else. So we have gotten through all of that — I’m sure we’ll get through all of this too.”

Here’s more from Reuters:

Donald Trumpmay be set to testify in the writer E. Jean Carroll’s latest civil defamation trial in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, following a two-day postponement triggered by COVID-19 concerns.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan canceled testimony on Monday after one juror who felt ill was sent home for a COVID test, and Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said she caught a fever after dining with her parents, one of whom contracted the virus.

Tuesday’s trial session was later also canceled, a court officer said.

The trial concerns Trump’s June 2019 denials of Carroll’s claim that he raped the former Elle magazine advice columnist in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan.

A different jury last May ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million over a similar October 2022 denial.

Kaplan has ruled that the first trial established that Trump defamed and sexually abused Carroll.

The only issue for the nine jurors in the second trial is how much money Trump should pay Carroll, if any. Carroll, 80, is seeking at least $10 million.

Prior to the postponement, Habba said Trump “had been planning to testify” after Carroll’s lawyers finished presenting their case.

Trump plans to be in New Hampshire on Tuesday for that state’s Republican presidential primary, where he has been leading in opinion polls.