Lawyer: Trump Might Not Appear at Rape Case

Former President Donald Trump wants to spare New Yorkers from blocked streets and high security and might skip the Manhattan civil trial in a case where a woman filed a lawsuit alleging he raped her 30 years ago, his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, said.

The New York Times reported Tacopina wrote to the judge in the case that Trump “wishes to appear” at the trial set to begin Tuesday.

But Tacopina noted that when Trump recently appeared in Manhattan for arraignment on unrelated criminal charges, it forced the closure of Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive while the former president was being driven to Manhattan State Supreme Court. Streets within a three-block radius of the courthouse had to be blocked off and security was heightened.

Magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll claims, in the civil case, Trump defamed her with his denials and comments over her allegations that he raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.

Tacopina told Judge Lewis Kaplan that for Trump to appear at the trial, the former president’s movements would need to be coordinated hours in advance each day by a Secret Service advance team and a that tactical plan would have to be developed, according to the Times.

“As part of that plan, courthouse floors would need to be locked down, elevators shut down, courthouse personnel confined to their offices and members of the public restricted from the area,” Tacopina wrote.

If Trump does not appear in court, Tacopina said he will ask that Kaplan tell the jury that while no litigant is required to appear at a civil trial, Trump’s absence, “by design, avoids the logistical burdens that his presence, as the former president, would cause the courthouse and New York City.”

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, pushed back in a letter to the court.

“The notion that Mr. Trump would not appear as some sort of favor to the City of New York — and that the jury should be instructed as much — taxes the credulity of the credulous,” she wrote.