CNN
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Former President Donald Trump has asked the judge to declare a mistrial in his civil battery and defamation trial, arguing the judge has made “pervasive unfair and prejudicial rulings” against him.
Trump attorney Joe Tacopina, in a letter filed overnight Monday, said alternatively he would ask Judge Lewis Kaplan to “correct the record for each and every instance in which the Court has mischaracterized the facts of this case to the jury” or provide him greater leeway in cross examining E. Jean Carroll.
“Here, despite the fact trial testimony has been underway for only two days, the proceedings are already replete with numerous examples of Defendant’s unfair treatment by the Court, most of which has been witnessed by the Jury,” the letter said.
Carroll sued Trump, alleging he raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim, said she wasn’t his type and suggested she made up the story to boost sales of her book. Carroll will be on the stand Monday for a second day of cross-examination by Tacopina. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
Among the issues raised by Tacopina are the judge’s ruling restricting Tacopina from asking Carroll additional questions about any efforts Carroll made to try to obtain security camera footage from the department store, “expressing a corroborative view” that there was no one on the sixth floor of the department store at the time of the alleged assault, and calling certain lines of the defense attorney’s questioning “argumentative” in front of the jury.
It would be unusual for the judge to declare a mistrial based on his own statements during a trial.
