A CNN legal expert said Thursday that he expects U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, presiding over a defamation case concerning former President Donald Trump, to have “marshals lined up” and ready to drag the former president out of the courtroom if Trump “steps one iota out of line.”
A judge in September ruled that Trump is liable for making defamatory remarks about writer E. Jean Carroll back in 2019, when she first publicly accused him of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store during the mid-1990s. This current trial is limited to damages stemming from that ruling; Carroll is seeking at least $10 million.
A CNN legal panel speculated on what would happen if Trump does testify in the case, and how Kaplan could “constrain” the former president.
“If the judge really constrains [Trump] — [Kaplan] has a number of ways to constrain him,” ex-prosecutor Shan Wu said, according to Mediaite. “[Kaplan] can interrupt him. He can tell the lawyers to try to control them. He could offer to even sanction him if he continues that. Or you could just stop him from testifying. So there’s ways for the judge to control Trump.”
“And I think that the way it plays out is Trump just wants as much time as he can in the limelight there to be doing his thing, to be railing against the judge,” Wu added.
“I think the judge has already got the marshals lined up,” former prosecutor Nick Ackerman jumped in. “If this [Trump] steps one iota out of line, he’s going to be taken out by the marshals.”
When asked about who would benefit from such a move, CNN senior legal correspondent Paula Reid said it would be Trump.
Notably, Trump has already expressed that he would “love it” if Kaplan ejected him from the courtroom.
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Kaplan threatened to remove Trump from the courtroom earlier in the trial after the former president was heard talking about the actions against him being a “witch hunt” and “con job” near jurors, ABC7 Chicago reported. “I would love it,” Trump responded to the threat.
Trump has been outspoken about Kaplan and Carroll. He’s posted to his Truth Social account that the judge is biased and has “absolute hatred” for him, and said he never “touched” Carroll.
“The only right, honest, and lawful thing that Clinton-appointed Judge Lewis Kaplan, who has so far been unable to see clearly because of his absolute hatred of Donald J. Trump (ME!), can do is to end this unAmerican injustice being done to a President of the United States, who was wrongfully accused by a woman he never met, saw, or touched (a photo line does not count!), and knows absolutely nothing about,” Trump wrote in a post.
“I have been considered an A-List celebrity for many decades, so even decades ago, since no one knows which date or dates to refer to, because the accusing woman can’t say the day, month, season, year, or decade, it would have been impossible for me to walk into a crowded department store (surrounded by buildings I own), right opposite the cashiers’ checkout desk, without being written about on Page Six, and every other outlet at the time,” he continued. “Remember, those gossip columnists were, perhaps, even more vicious and obsessed than the Internet of today.”