NEW YORK — Donald Trump stormed out of closing arguments at his defamation trial Friday as a lawyer for writer E. Jean Carroll urged a jury to award at least $24 million in damages for the “storm of hate” caused by the former president as he reacted to Carroll's claims that he sexually attacked her. He returned later when his lawyer argued on his behalf.
Just minutes after attorney Roberta Kaplan began her closing argument in Manhattan federal court, Trump suddenly rose from his seat at the defense table and walked toward the exit, pausing to scan the packed courtroom as members of the Secret Service leaped up to follow him out.
The unexpected departure prompted Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to speak up, briefly interrupting the closing argument to note: “The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom.” He did not return for the reminder of the first closing argument.
Later, Trump returned to the courtroom to hear his lawyer, Alina Habba, argue that he should not be made to pay Carroll for comments he made that Carroll's lawyers say set off a flood of hate messages from strangers.
Early in her closing, Habba showed the jury a video in which Trump said a jury's verdict last year finding that he had sexually abused Carroll was “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.”
“You know why he has not wavered?” Habba asked the jury. “Because it's the truth.”
That statement prompted an objection that the judge sustained with a warning that “if you violate my instructions again, Ms. Habba, you may have consequences.”
The comment carried extra weight because just before arguments began, the judge — without jurors in the room — threatened to send Habba to jail for continuing to talk when he told her she was finished.
Roberta Kaplan and the judge are unrelated.
Trump, who was not required to attend the civil lawsuit proceedings, had appeared agitated all morning, vigorously shaking his head as Carroll's attorney branded him a liar who had incited a “social media mob” to attack her client.
“This case is about punishing Donald Trump for what he's done and what he continues to do,” Roberta Kaplan continued. “This trial is about getting him to stop.”
Nine jurors will start deliberating later in the day whether Carroll, a longtime advice columnist, is entitled to more than the $5 million she was awarded in a separate trial last year.
The final remarks from the lawyers come a day after Trump managed to sneak past a federal judge's rules severely limiting what he could say during his turn on the witness stand, which wound up lasting just 3 minutes. He left fuming that he hadn't been given an opportunity to refute Carroll’s sexual abuse accusations.
“She said something that I considered to be a false accusation,” Trump said, later adding: “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and, frankly, the presidency.” The jury was told by the judge to disregard both remarks.
A different jury last May concluded that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the spring of 1996 in the changing room of a luxury Manhattan department store. It also found that he defamed her in 2022 by claiming she made up the allegation to sell a memoir.
Trump, the Republican frontrunner in this year's presidential election, has long regretted his decision not to testify at that trial, blaming his lawyers for bad advice.
During her closing, Roberta Kaplan told jurors that the current case was not about a sexual assault.
“We had that case,” she said, referencing the first trial. “That’s why Donald Trump’s testimony was so short yesterday. He doesn’t get a do-over this time.”
As she finished her argument, the lawyer urged jurors to support “the principle that the rule of law stands for all of us” by sending an unmistakable message to a man who “time and time again has shown contempt for the law.”
She said the jury should award $12 million to repair Carroll's reputation and another $12 million for the suffering she has endured because of Trump's attacks. Then, she said an “unusually high punitive award” was also necessary against a man worth billions of dollars “to have any hope of stopping Donald Trump.”
The jury in this new trial has been told that it is there for the limited purpose and jurors must accept the verdict reached last year. The current jury will only determine whether additional damages are owed for statements Trump made in June 2019 while he was president. The claims had been delayed for years by court appeals.
Carroll's lawyers seek over $10 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Habba has argued against damages, saying Carroll's association with Trump had given her the fame she craved and that death threats she received cannot be blamed on Trump's remarks.
Carroll, 80, testified at last year's trial that she had a chance encounter with Trump at a Bergdorf Goodman store that was flirtatious and lighthearted until Trump cornered her in a changing room. Her claim that Trump raped her was rejected by last year's jury, though it agreed she was sexually abused.
Last week, Carroll testified that her career was shattered by Trump's statements about her claims over the last five years, most recently on the campaign trail for president. She said she bought bullets for a gun she inherited from her father and installed an electronic fence around her home.
On Thursday, Trump testified that he stood “100%" behind comments he made in an October 2002 deposition in which he denied Carroll's accusations, calling her “sick” and a “whack job.”
Kaplan intends to instruct jurors Friday that the jury last year concluded that Trump had digitally penetrated Carroll in the department store, but the same jury did not find that he had raped her, according to how rape is defined under New York state law.
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.