Former president Donald Trump abruptly walked out on closing arguments in Manhattan federal court on Friday.
Mr Trump’s exit came as a lawyer for a writer seeking millions of dollars in damages for defamation urged a jury to send him a message to stop abuse of her client.
US District Judge Lewis A Kaplan interrupted the closing argument that the lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, was making on behalf of writer E Jean Carroll to note for the record that Mr Trump “just rose and walked out of the courtroom”.
Later, Mr Trump returned to the courtroom to hear his lawyer, Alina Habba, argue that he should not be made to pay Ms Carroll for comments he made that Ms Carroll’s lawyers say set off a flood of hate messages from strangers.
Early in her closing, Ms Habba showed the jury a video in which Trump said a jury’s verdict last year finding that he had sexually abused Carroll was “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.”
“You know why he has not wavered?” Ms Habba asked the jury. “Because it’s the truth.”
That statement prompted an objection that the judge sustained with a warning that “if you violate my instructions again, Ms Habba, you may have consequences.”
The comment carried extra weight because just before arguments began, the judge — without jurors in the room — threatened to send Ms Habba to jail for continuing to talk when he told her she was finished.
Roberta Kaplan and the judge are unrelated.
Trump had appeared agitated all morning, vigorously shaking his head during Kaplan’s closing arguments.
The walkout occurred shortly after Roberta Kaplan said: “Donald Trump has tried to normalise conduct that is abnormal.”
The closings were occurring in the defamation case against Mr Trump a day after he left the courtroom fuming that he had not been given an opportunity to refute Ms Carroll’s sexual abuse accusations.
Lawyers were summing up for nine jurors who will start deliberating later in the day whether Ms Carroll, a long-time advice columnist, is entitled to more than the 5.0 million US dollars (£3.93 million) she was awarded in a separate trial last year.
The final remarks from the lawyers come a day after Mr rump managed to sneak past a federal judge’s rules severely limiting what he could say during his turn on the witness stand, which wound up lasting just three minutes.
“She said something that I considered to be a false accusation,” Mr Trump said, later adding: “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and, frankly, the presidency.”
The jury was told by the judge to disregard both remarks.
A different jury last May concluded that Mr Trump sexually abused Ms Carroll in the spring of 1996 in the changing room of a luxury Manhattan department store.
It also found that he defamed her in 2022 by claiming she made up the allegation to sell a memoir.
Mr Trump, the Republican frontrunner in this year’s presidential election, has long regretted his decision not to testify at that trial, blaming his lawyers for bad advice.
The jury in this new trial has been told that it is there for a limited purpose.
Judge Kaplan will instruct jurors on the law before they deliberate, telling them that they must accept the verdict reached last year and only determine whether additional damages are owed for statements Mr rump made in June 2019 while he was president.
The claims had been delayed for years by court appeals.
Ms Carroll’s lawyers seek more than 10 million dollars (£7.86 million) in compensatory and punitive damages.
Trump attorney Ms Habba has argued against damages, saying Ms Carroll’s association with Mr Trump had given her the fame she craved and that death threats she received cannot be blamed on Trump’s remarks.
Judge Kaplan intends to instruct jurors on Friday that the jury last year concluded that Trump had assaulted Ms Carroll in the department store, but the same jury did not find that he had raped her, according to how rape is defined under New York state law.
