In a letter filed Sunday with federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, who will soon be handling a trial on civil claims from writer E. Jean Carroll against Donald Trump of rape, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan tore into a recent request from the former president’s legal team for renewed consideration of whether or not to allow testimony from a woman named Natasha Stoynoff at trial.
Stoynoff is another woman who has alleged she suffered sexual misconduct perpetrated by the former president. She was a journalist assembling a story on Trump when she says he forced himself on her at his Mar-a-Lago resort in southern Florida, kissing her. Kaplan (the judge) had already concluded in favor of allowing testimony from Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds, another woman who said she endured an incident of sexual misconduct perpetrated by the former president. Trump’s team characterized the motion on Stoynoff’s prospective testimony as a request for so-called clarification, which Carroll’s lawyer argued was more rightly understood as a request for reconsideration of the judge’s original decision to allow the testimony — a request that, under that framework, would be way overdue without any intervening factors identified in law or surrounding circumstances that would call for a shift.
Trump’s request was evidently founded on a document his team has possessed for months outlining sentiments apparently attributed to Stoynoff potentially characterizing what happened with her and Trump in different terms, based on Carroll’s lawyer’s filing. A basis for allowing her testimony is evidently that what she says took place is substantially similar to claims Carroll has made against Trump — although Carroll’s lawyer noted in her letter that there’d still be other procedural grounds allowing inclusion of the testimony.
“The Court identified multiple grounds on which a reasonable juror could find that Trump’s conduct targeting Stoynoff constituted an attempt to engage in conduct covered by Rule 413(d),” Carroll’s lawyer said. “Even if Stoynoff’s trial testimony more closely resembles the language that Trump attributes to her—and Trump will still bear a heavy burden if he seeks to rely on this document —the Court’s original analysis would remain well supported. Indeed, the Court itself observed that there were myriad overlapping grounds on which to find that Trump’s forcible kissing of Stoynoff was part of an attempt to engage in contact with her in a way that would be consistent with Rule 415.” Rule 415 is a federal rule for handling evidence at trial allowing for testimony indicating other instances of apparent sexual assault in civil cases dealing with such claims involving another victim. Kaplan wants Trump’s ploy denied. Read more at this link.
