Hours after his first win in the Republican presidential nominee race, former US President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared in a New York courtroom for the start of a defamation trial brought by writer E Jean Carroll after an earlier jury found he had sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
In court, Ms Carroll's lawyer told a jury that the then-US president made her life miserable when she went public in 2019 with her story that he had attacked her in a department store dressing room in Manhattan in 1996.
"He used the world's biggest microphone to attack Ms Carroll, to humiliate her, and to destroy her reputation," her lawyer Shawn Crowley was quoted as saying by the news agency Reuters.
Mr Trump, however, left his defamation trial before Ms Carroll's lawyer's opening statement.
Ms Carroll, a New York columnist, is seeking more than $10 million in damages, and jurors will only consider how much Mr Trump should pay Ms Carroll in damages, not whether the alleged assault took place or whether the 77-year-old leader lied about it afterward.
Mr Trump has already lost one defamation case against Ms Carroll.
A jury in May last year had ordered him to pay her $5 million for having sexually abused her during the encounter and defaming her in 2022 by denying that it happened.
He is appealing the $5 million award and could appeal any award at the second trial and appeals could take years.
In both cases, he has said he did not know Ms Carroll and that she invented their encounter to sell her memoir.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan has barred him from arguing that he did not defame or sexually assault Ms Carroll or that she made up her account.
(With agency inputs)
