As part of her closing argument in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, Donald Trump's attorney Alina Habba attempted to get the jury to disregard the flood of death and rape threats the New York writer received after she went public with her sexual assault accusations.
In a trial last year, the former president was found liable for sexual abuse by a jury and ordered to pay $2 million for that charge and an additional $3 million for defaming her in 2022.
The current trial is related to Trump's earlier defamatory attacks while he was president which Carroll claims have damaged her reputation and additionally subjected her to ugly threats from supporters of Trump.
During closing arguments on Friday, Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan — no relation to Judge Lewis Kaplan — told jurors, according to Inner City Press: "Consider what Donald Trump has done here. He said she made it up, she was a disgrace; he threatened her twice, he unleashed millions of others to flood her with hate. We played his deposition — he called her mentally sick, and threatened to sue," before noting that the attacks by Trump have not stopped.
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Given a chance to respond during her closing statement, Habba once again lashed out at the New York writer, complaining that she deleted some of the threatening messages which Habba believes should have been kept as evidence.
As Politico's Erica Orden reported from the courtroom, Habba claimed, "In her [Carroll's] own words, she would just 'delete,' 'delete,' 'delete.' Never called the cops, never filed a report, has no evidence."
Having said that, she blithely dismissed the flood of hate Carroll was and is still subjected to and said her client was not responsible.
Addressing social media postings specifically, Orden reports Trump's attorney told the jury, "They are doing it because they didn’t find her story to be credible and they independently believed she was a liar. This is the beauty and danger of free speech in America. Everyone is entitled to their opinion."
She then added, "President Trump has no more control over the thoughts and feelings of Twitter users than he does over the weather."
