Trump walks out of courtroom as Carroll's lawyer offers closing argument

NEW YORK: Donald Trump walked out of the courtroom on Friday as a lawyer for the writer E. Jean Carroll offered her closing argument to convince jurors that Trump should pay Carroll millions of dollars for damaging her reputation by denying he raped her.

Trump left as Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan told jurors they should punish the former U.S. president for persistently lying about her client and destroying her reputation as a responsible journalist.

"We all have to follow the law," Kaplan said. "Donald Trump, however, acts as if these rules and laws just don't apply to him."

Carroll, 80, is seeking at least $10 million over Trump's June 2019 denials, when he was president, that he had raped her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan.

Trump, 77, accused Carroll of making up the encounter to boost sales of her memoir.

But another jury last May ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million over a similar denial in October 2022, finding that Trump had defamed and sexually abused her.

Because that verdict is binding for the current trial, the seven-man, two-woman jury need decide only how much Trump owes Carroll for harming her reputation, and whether to impose punitive damages to keep Trump from defaming her again.

Trump has continued attacking Carroll during the trial, proclaiming that her case was a "witch hunt" and a "con job" and maintaining that he had not known her.

"This trial is about getting him to stop, once and for all," Kaplan said on Friday.

A lawyer for Trump will offer a closing argument later in the day.

The trial is in its fifth day.

Trump had attended the entire trial except for opening statements, which he skipped for a presidential campaign event.

The Republican is seeking to retake the White House in the November election in a likely showdown against Democrat Joe Biden, who beat him in 2020.

On Thursday, Trump spent only four minutes defending himself on the witness stand after U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is not related to Carroll's lawyer, forbade him and his lawyers from revisiting issues that the first trial had settled.

Trump was allowed to stand by testimony he gave in an October 2022 deposition, in which he called Carroll's claims a "hoax" and said she was "mentally sick." Jurors had earlier been shown video excerpts from the deposition.

Carroll had written the "Ask E. Jean" column for Elle from 1993 to 2019, and often appeared on such programs as NBC's "Today" and ABC's "Good Morning America."

She said those appearances dried up after Trump called her a liar, and that his denials led her to be bombarded with online death threats and other attacks that have yet to stop.

Lawyers for Trump have said it was Carroll's accusations and not Trump's denials that prompted the attacks, saying the attacks began even before the former president said anything.

The 2024 presidential race is expected to be close even though Trump faces 91 felony counts in four separate criminal indictments, including two cases accusing him of trying to illegally overturn his 2020 election loss.

Trump has tried to make his legal travails a campaign asset, claiming he is a victim of biased prosecutors, plaintiffs like Carroll, and an unfair judicial system.