NEW YORK (AP) 鈥 Former President Donald Trump rejected his last chance Sunday to testify at a civil trial where a longtime advice columnist has accused him of raping her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996.
Trump, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, was given until 5 p.m. Sunday by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to file a request to testify. Nothing was filed.
It was not a surprise. Trump has not shown up once during the two-week Manhattan trial where writer , repeating claims she first made publicly in a 2019 memoir. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages totaling millions of dollars.
The jury has also from an October in which Trump vehemently denied raping Carroll or ever really knowing her.
Without Trump's testimony, lawyers were scheduled to make closing arguments Monday, with deliberations likely to begin on Tuesday.
After plaintiffs rested their case Thursday, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina immediately rested the defense case as well without calling any witnesses. He did not request additional time for Trump to decide to testify. Tacopina declined in an email to comment after the deadline passed Sunday.
On Thursday, Kaplan had given Trump extra time to change his mind and request to testify, though the judge did not promise he would grant such a request to reopen the defense case so Trump could take the stand.
At the time, Kaplan noted that he'd heard about news reports Thursday in which Trump told reporters while visiting his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, that he would 鈥減robably attend鈥 the trial. Trump also criticized Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, as an 鈥渆xtremely hostile鈥 and 鈥渞ough judge鈥 who 鈥渄oesn't like me very much.鈥
On the witness stand, Carroll, 79, testified that Trump, 76, raped her in spring 1996 after they met at the entrance of the midtown Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman.
She said the encounter began as a fun and flirtatious outing as Trump coaxed her into helping him shop for a gift for another woman. She said they ended up in the store's desolate lingerie section, where they teased each other to try on a see-through bodysuit.
As Carroll recalled it, laughter accompanied them into a dressing room where Trump became violent, slamming her up against a wall, pulling aside her tights and raping her before she kneed him and fled the store.
In his deposition, Trump said Carroll made it up. He called it 鈥渁 false, disgusting lie鈥 delivered by a 鈥渘ut job鈥 who was trying to stoke sales of her book.
He also repeated comments he made in statements that she was not his 鈥渢ype.鈥
鈥淪he鈥檚 not my type and that鈥檚 100% true,鈥 he said.
And he repeated his claims in a 2005 鈥淎ccess Hollywood鈥 video in which he bragged that men who are celebrities can grab women by the genitals without asking.
鈥淗istorically that鈥檚 true with stars,鈥 he said.
Carroll , minutes after New York state enacted a law allowing adult sexual assault victims to sue others even if the attacks occurred decades earlier.
Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote a letter to the judge Sunday to complain that Trump still has not removed April 26 posts on his social media network in which he called Carroll's allegations 鈥渁 made up SCAM.鈥 And she noted that he repeated disparaging remarks about the trial three days ago in Ireland.
After the April 26 postings on Truth Social, Judge Kaplan, who is not related to Carroll's lawyer, said Trump's comments were 鈥渉ighly inappropriate鈥 and expressed concern that Trump was trying to communicate to the jury "about stuff that has no business being spoken about.鈥
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.
