Donald Trump's 'Deleted Evidence' Claim Slammed by Lawyer

E. Jean Carroll's lawyer has sharply criticized Donald Trump's legal team for "making a spectacle" out of the former Elle columnist's decision to delete hateful emails from alleged supporters of the former president .

In a filing to the judge, lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote on Sunday that Trump's counsel, Alina Habba, "made a spectacle in Court last week when Ms. Carroll testified that she had deleted certain death threats, even though they have known about that for nearly a year and did not previously raise a concern."

Newsweek sought email comment from Trump's attorney on Monday.

In May 2023, a jury decided that Trump must pay Carroll a total of $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages over sexual battery and defamation claims.

The jury accepted Carroll's claim that Trump had sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and defamed her character when she took a lawsuit against him.

In the latest (other) defamation case, Carroll is suing Trump for 2019 comments he made in which he said she was inventing the story. A court has already found that Trump did defame her in those comments and a jury is only deciding how much damages Trump will have to pay Carroll.

Trump's team accused Carroll of filing her suits against the former president for political reasons.

Kaplan noted that on January 31, 2023, Carroll sat for a deposition in which she said that "my initial reaction was to delete [death threats] when I saw them."

In her evidence to the defamation trial last week, Carroll testified that, after Trump made defamatory comments about her in 2019, she began to receive messages that threatened her with physical violence.

She testified that she received messages, which included graphic images, for the first time. on June 21, 2019.

"Ms. Carroll further testified that she deleted these messages almost immediately to 'protect' herself and take back 'control of the situation,'" Kaplan wrote in Sunday's briefing.

Kaplan sharply criticized Habba for her style of cross-examining Carroll about the emails and said it led to confusion about what was deleted.

In cross-examination, Habba said that Carroll wrongly destroyed evidence by deleting the messages she had received, according to the filing.

In her submission, Kaplan accused Habba of shouting at Carroll and of asking confusing questions that led to confused answers.

"This muddled testimony, which resulted from muddled and shouted questions, is hardly sufficient to carry Mr. Trump's burden of demonstrating that Ms. Carroll deleted evidence when she was under an obligation to preserve it," Kaplan wrote.

"At the risk of stating the obvious, this line of questioning and testimony was not a model of clarity. Ms. Carroll testified that she has been receiving threats since June 2019. She testified about several specific threats and said she had received many more. She testified that she has preserved her own posts on social media," Kaplan wrote.

Kaplan also condemned Habba for requesting a mistrial while the jury was present.

"In a flagrant departure from appropriate courtroom decorum, defense counsel has already requested a mistrial declaration in the presence of the jury. The Court responded by stating: 'Denied. The jury will disregard everything Ms. Habba just said,'" Kaplan noted.