NEW YORK, Jan 17 (Reuters) – A federal judge warned Donald Trump on Wednesday that he could be kicked out of the trial in writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case if the former U.S. president is disruptive.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s threat came after a lawyer for Carroll said Trump was talking loudly with his lawyers during Carroll’s testimony.
Carroll, 80, who wrote an advice column for Elle magazine for 27 years, has said Trump destroyed her reputation and should pay millions of dollars in damages for denying in 2019 that he had raped her nearly a quarter of a century earlier.
“He said: ‘It is a witch hunt, it really is a con job,'” Carroll’s lawyer Shawn Crowley said outside the jury’s presence in federal court in Manhattan.
Kaplan warned Trump to control himself during the trial.
“Mr. Trump has the right to be present here,” Kaplan said. “That right can be forfeited and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive … and if he disregards court orders.
“Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial,” the judge continued. “I understand you are probably very eager for me to do that.”
