He testified for under three minutes. But former President Donald Trump still broke a judge’s rules on what he could tell a jury about writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault and defamation allegations, and he left the courtroom Thursday bristling to the spectators: “This is not America.”

Testifying in his own defense in the defamation trial, Trump didn’t look at the jury during his short, heavily negotiated stint on the witness stand. Because of the complex legal context of the case, the judge limited his lawyers to asking a handful of short questions, each of which could be answered yes or no — such as whether he’d made his negative statements in response to an accusation and didn’t intend anyone to harm Carroll.

But Trump nudged past those limits.

  • azimir@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    What am I missing? I figure it’s because people don’t know the intricacies of the two trials. He’s already been found liable for the sexual assault in the first completed case. This current case has the same basic facts so the judge ruled that there is no re-litigation to be done on liability, only on damages.

    I presume your downvotes are most likely related to the first sentence in your post. They get that far and likely assume that you’re denying the first case’s conclusions without catching the subtle nature of the two cases.