`Access Hollywood' tape of Trump won't be shown to jury
A lawyer for a writer who says Donald Trump sexually abused her in the 1990s and then defamed her while president in 2019 said Saturday that the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape and two women who accused Trump of abuse will not be put before a New York jury considering defamation damages.
The revelation by attorney Roberta Kaplan, who represents advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, means that the Republican frontrunner in this year's presidential race could testify in Manhattan federal court as early as Monday, a day before the New Hampshire primary.
The jury is considering whether Trump owes more to Carroll than the $5 million awarded to her last spring by another jury that concluded Trump sexually abused but did not rape Carroll in the dressing room of a luxury Manhattan department store in spring 1996 and then defamed her in October 2022.
Trump attended the trial for two of its first
three days, only skipping it on Thursday, when he attended the funeral of his mother-in-law in Florida.
Kaplan said late Saturday in a letter to the judge that she would not show jurors the 2005 tape in which Trump is caught on a hot mic speaking disparagingly of women to keep the issues in the trial “focused.”
For the same reason, she said she won't call two other Trump accusers as witnesses: Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds.
Both women testified at the trial that ended
last May. Leeds, a former stockbroker, said Trump abruptly groped her against her will on an airline flight in the 1970s, while Stoynoff, a writer, said Trump forcibly kissed her against her will while she was interviewing him for a 2005 article.
Kaplan noted that Trump's lawyers had said he is entitled to testify concerning the “Access Hollywood” tape and the allegations of Stoynoff and Leeds, though he would not be if they were not introduced into the case by Carroll's attorneys.