Trump Attorney Targets Judge for Influencing Jurors

The attorney for former President Donald Trump sent a letter to the court on Monday, writing that the judge overseeing the defamation case involving E. Jean Carroll has influenced jurors, calling for a mistrial.

In the letter, Trump's lawyer, Joe Tacopina, wrote, "We respectfully submit this letter, on behalf of defendant Donald J. Trump, to request that the Court grant a mistrial based on pervasive unfair and prejudicial rulings by the Court; or in the alternative, (1) correct the record for each and every instance in which the court has mischaracterized the facts of the case to the jury and (2) allow Defendant's counsel to have greater latitude to cross-examine the Plaintiff and her witnesses."

Last week, the defamation trial involving Trump and Carroll, a former Elle columnist, began after Carroll filed a lawsuit against the former president for civil defamation and rape. Carroll has accused Trump of raping her in a dressing room at a Bergdorf Goodman in New York City in the 1990s. Trump has continued to deny any wrongdoing in the case, with Carroll alleging that comments the former president made about denying the rape allegations were defamatory.

The letter sent by Tacopina states that a mistrial should be granted because the court and the judge overseeing the case, Judge Lewis Kaplan, have "mischaracterized the evidence in favor of [the] Plaintiff," and "bolstered the testimony of [the] Plaintiff." The letter also mentions other aspects of the trial where Trump's legal team felt it was grounds for a mistrial, including the warnings that the judge gave to the former president's son, Eric Trump, for comments he made about the funding of the lawsuit filed by Carroll.

Eric Trump posted comments on social media last week criticizing the lawsuit filed by Carroll saying that it was funded by "political activist Reid Hoffman (co-founder of Linkedin)."

"A civil lawsuit, being funded by a billionaire, with no direct involvement in the case, out of pure hatred, spite or fear of a formidable candidate, is an embarrassment to our country, should be illegal and tells you everything you need to know about the case at hand," Eric Trump added in the post, which has since been deleted.

Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney who posted the letter to Twitter, said that the claims made by Tacopina won't "result in a mistrial, but they are setting up an argument they'll make in appeal if the jury finds against Trump."

"Judges routinely give a "clean up" instruction before a jury deliberates, telling them not to construe anything the court says as evidence, or as a suggestion of what their verdict should be. The judge here is experienced & steady & unlikely to be thrown by Trump tactics," she wrote in a series of tweets on Monday.

Meanwhile, the former president also posted several messages to his Truth Social account about the case, writing that it was a "made up SCAM," and that Carroll's lawyer "is a political operative, financed by a big political donor that they said didn't exist, only to get caught lying about that."

"This is a fraudulent & false story--Witch Hunt!" he added in his post.

Kaplan warned Trump and his son for the comments they made online telling Tacopina that his "client is perhaps sailing into harm's way with his son."

"There are some relevant United States statutes here, and someone ought to be thinking about them," Kaplan said last week.

Newsweek reached out to Tacopina for further comment via email.