Judge orders anonymous jury for trial in Trump defamation suit

A US federal judge has cited Donald Trump’s “repeated public statements” among reasons why a jury will be anonymous when it considers damages stemming from a defamation lawsuit by a writer who says the former president sexually abused her in the 1990s.

Judge Lewis A Kaplan issued an order establishing that the jury to be chosen for the January trial in Manhattan will be transported by the US Marshals Service.

“In view of Mr Trump’s repeated public statements with respect to the plaintiff and court in this case, as well as in other cases against him, and the extensive media coverage that this case already has received and that is likely to increase once the trial is imminent or under way, the court finds that there is strong reason to believe the jury requires the protections” anonymity provides, Judge Kaplan wrote in an order.

Another anonymous jury in May awarded 5 million dollars (£4 million) in damages to columnist E Jean Carroll, 79, after finding that Trump sexually abused her in 1996 in the dressing room of a luxury department store and defamed her with comments he made in autumn 2022 that disparaged her claims.

The jury rejected Ms Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her. Judge Kaplan presided over that trial as well.

The January 15 trial stems from a lawsuit first filed in 2019 in response to comments Trump made after Ms Carroll wrote in a memoir that he attacked her after a chance encounter in a Manhattan store near Trump Tower, where Trump lived.

The progression of the lawsuit was slowed by appeals. A federal appeals court has yet to rule on Trump’s claim that absolute presidential immunity protects him from the lawsuit.

After the May verdict, Judge Kaplan ruled that Ms Carroll’s lawyers will not have to re-establish to a new jury that Trump sexually attacked her. Instead, they will be left to decide what damages, if any, he should face for his remarks.

That lawsuit has been updated by Ms Carroll’s lawyers to include remarks Trump made on a televised debate a day after the verdict. Ms Carroll wants at least 10 million dollars (£8 million) in compensatory damages and substantially more in punitive damages.

A week ago, Trump, the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was fined 10,000 dollars (£8,000) by a New York state judge for violating a gagging order prohibiting him from criticising court personnel in a civil fraud case.

The state judge, Arthur Engoron, required him to sit in a witness box and answer questions. Trump denied he was referring to a senior law clerk when he told reporters outside court that someone “sitting alongside” Judge Engoron was “perhaps even much more partisan than he is”.

After Trump, 77, gave evidence, the judge said: “I find that the witness is not credible.”

Judge Engoron – who had earlier fined Trump 5,000 dollars (£4,000) for violating the same gagging order after the judge found he had targeted his principal law clerk on social media – even suggested the possibility of holding Trump “in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him” for further violations.

Trump also faces four criminal indictments. He has pleaded not guilty in two cases accusing him of seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, along with a classified documents case and charges that he helped arrange a pay-off to porn actress Stormy Daniels to silence her before the 2016 presidential election.