Former President Donald Trumpâs lawyers have asked for a mistrial to be declared in writer E. Jean Carrollâs defamation lawsuit
Former President Donald Trumpâs legal team has asked the judge in E. Jean Carrollâs defamation case against the former president to declare a mistrial, arguing that Ms. Carroll failed to preserve key evidence by deleting emails that purportedly included death threats.
Ms. Habba said Ms. Carroll âfailed to take reasonable steps to preserve relevant evidence. In fact, she did much worseâshe actively deleted evidence which she now attempts to rely on in establishing her damages claim.â
Ms. Carrollâs lawyers have made the purported death threats an important reason why their client is asking the jury to award her $10 million in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages. They blame the death threats on President Trumpâs public remarks about Ms. Carroll.
âPlaintiff recounted to the jury that she received vicious death threats on June 21, 2019, which she directly attributed to President Trumpâs June 21, 2019 statement,â Ms. Habba wrote in the letter. âAnd she sought to substantiate her claim for emotional harm by describing how she felt like an attack would happen âright nowâ and that her heart would race.â
âHowever, it cannot be established that these messages existed at all, since Plaintiff deleted them,â she added.
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In her letter, Ms. Habba said the deletions are significant because the missing evidence plays a key role in Ms. Carrollâs demands.
Ms. Habba then asked the judge to declare a mistrial to preclude Ms. Carroll from seeking damages related to purported death threats or to include an adverse inference charge against Ms. Carroll, which is basically an instruction to the jury to weigh the missing evidence against her.
Ms. Carrollâs attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the mistrial request.
The trial started on Jan. 16 and is set to resume on Monday.
President Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the case.
Lawsuit Background
This legal saga stems from a defamation lawsuit Ms. Carroll filed over allegedly defamatory comments President Trump made about her in 2019 when she first publicly accused him of sexual assault.
In 2022, the New York state legislature passed the Adult Survivor Act, which amended state law to give victims of certain sexual offenses a one-year window, beginning on Nov. 24, 2022, to file a civil lawsuit against alleged offenders. Ms. Carroll then filed a second lawsuit on Nov. 24, 2022, under this Act, which went to trial.
A day after the verdictâon May 10âPresident Trump appeared at a town hall event on CNN, where he called Carroll a âwhack jobâ and said her claims against him were fake.
The trial for Ms. Carrollâs initial defamation lawsuit began on Jan. 16 and is set to continue Monday.
This latest development comes as President Trump faces numerous legal troubles that he says were orchestrated by his political rivals for election interference.
President Trump is the front-runner by far for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Legal Battles
President Trump faces an array of legal troubles, including a total of 91 felony counts across state and federal jurisdictions, coupled with a civil suit in New York that could reshape his business landscape.
Criminal charges related to alleged hush money payments and mishandling of sensitive documents add complexity, while election subversion accusations in both Georgia and Washington pose challenges.
President Trump also faces attempts in multiple states to disqualify him from the ballot under the 14th Amendment on the premise that his call for protests over what he claims was a stolen 2020 election amounted to inciting an âinsurrectionâ when a crowd breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Original News Source Link – Epoch Times
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