Lawyers: Trump might testify at defamation trial

NEW YORK — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump say he may testify at a mid-January civil trial set to decide how much he owes a columnist for defaming her after she said he sexually abused her three decades ago in a Manhattan luxury department store.

The lawyers filed papers in Manhattan federal court late Thursday to request that Trump’s October 2022 deposition transcript in the case not be shown to the jury because Trump “has been named as a witness to testify at this trial.”

The lawyers — Alina Habba and Michael Madaio — did not respond to an email Friday seeking comment.

The columnist, 80-year-old E. Jean Carroll, is planning to testify at the trial, slated to start Jan. 16, about how her life has been affected and threats she has faced since Trump claimed that he never knew her and that she was making false accusations against him.

The former Elle magazine columnist is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and substantially more in punitive damages after a jury at a Manhattan trial last May found she had been sexually abused by Trump in spring 1996 in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman store.

Carroll testified at that trial that her encounter with Trump seemed lighthearted as she accompanied him on a search for a gift for his friend in the store’s desolate lingerie area. But she said it turned violent inside the dressing room after they dared each other to try on a piece of lingerie.

She said Trump shoved her against a wall and raped her. The jury rejected the rape claim, but agreed that he sexually abused her. It awarded $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation.