Former president Donald Trump wants to be there next week when a jury in Manhattan hears a case involving an alleged rape nearly 30 years ago. But he’s more concerned about the additional traffic that might entail for New Yorkers.
That, in essence, is what Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina is asking the judge to tell jurors about Trump’s expected absence during much of the civil trial.
The battery and defamation trial, centered on a rape allegation by author E. Jean Carroll, is scheduled to begin Tuesday, and U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has asked both Trump and Carroll whether they plan to be present. Carroll will be there for the duration, her lawyer said.
In a letter submitted Wednesday, Tacopina wrote that Trump “wishes to appear” but is concerned about the “logistical burdens” that would impose on the federal courthouse and the surrounding city.
Tacopina cited what transpired when Trump appeared this month in a nearby state court for his arraignment in a separate case involving hush money payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels to conceal an alleged long-ago sexual dalliance.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Manhattan was shut down “for a significant amount of time while he traveled to the courthouse,” streets within a three-block radius of the courthouse were also closed, and “the courthouse itself was frozen while he was present,” Tacopina wrote.
“Defendant Trump’s appearance in the Southern District of New York in connection with this matter would result in similar logistical and financial burdens upon New York City, its residents and the Court itself,” Tacopina said, adding that Trump’s movements each day would need to be coordinated hours in advance by Secret Service agents.
As a result, Tacopina proposed that the judge instruct the jury that “while no litigant is required to appear at civil trial, the absence of the defendant, in this matter, by design, avoided the logistical burdens that his presence, as the former president, would cause the courthouse and New York City.”
Furthermore, Tacopina asked that the jury be told Trump is “excused unless and until he is called by either party to testify.”
Trump’s lawyers made no such request a few weeks ago regarding his arraignment.
Kaplan said in a memorandum Thursday that a request for a jury instruction is “premature” — and expressed little sympathy for Trump’s situation.
“There has been quite ample time within which to make whatever logistical arrangements should be made for his attendance, and certainly quite a bit more time than the five or six days between his recent indictment on state criminal charges and his arraignment on that indictment approximately one block from the location of the trial of this case,” Kaplan said.
“Mr. Trump is free to attend, to testify, or both,” Kaplan added. “He is also free to do none of these things. Should he elect to not appear or testify, his counsel may renew the request.”
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge overseeing the case, called Tacopina’s request “frivolous” in a letter to the judge later Wednesday.
“Mr. Trump will soon stand trial in federal court for sexual assault and defamation,” she wrote. “Given the gravity of the allegations at issue in this case, one might expect Mr. Trump to appear in person. But he is obviously free to choose otherwise.”
She added that “the notion that Mr. Trump would not appear as some sort of favor to the City of New York — and that the jury should be instructed as much — ‘taxes the credulity of the credulous.’”
Roberta Kaplan noted recent activities of the former president, including attending an Ultimate Fighting Championship event in Miami, speaking to a National Rifle Association meeting in Indianapolis, and being deposed in another civil case in New York — as well as a planned campaign event in New Hampshire next week.
“If Mr. Trump can find a way to attend wrestling championships, political conventions, civil depositions and campaign functions, then surely he could surmount the logistics of attending his own federal trial,” she wrote.
In 2019, Carroll publicly accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman, an upscale department store in Manhattan, in the mid-1990s. According to Carroll, she and Trump had a chance encounter at the store, and he asked her to help him pick out a present for another woman. During this encounter, she says, he attacked her.
Carroll is among more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct over the years.
In denying the allegations by Carroll, Trump said she was “not my type.” However, in a deposition at Mar-a-Lago last year, Trump mistook Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples when shown a photograph from the 1990s, potentially undermining one of the common defenses he has used to deny an attack.