Jury starts deliberations at Trump sex defamation trial

Jurors at the sex defamation trial of Donald Trump began deliberations Friday after a judge told them Trump "sexually assaulted" writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and defamed her in statements he made as president while denying her allegation.

Judge Lewis Kaplan told the nine-member jury in Manhattan federal court that they were to keep those facts in mind as deliberated on Carroll's request for millions of dollars in damages from Trump for his defamatory statements.

"What remains for you to decide," Kaplan said, is whether "Mr. Trump acted maliciously when he made his two statements" about Carroll.

"You must accept as true the facts as I explained to you as they have already been decided," the judge said, referring to Trump's sexual assault of Carroll, and his slandering of her decades later.

Trump looked on during the instructions with a frown on his face.

Earlier, Trump stalked out of the courtroom after Carroll's lawyer began her closing argument, in which she urged jurors to award monetary damages "large enough that it will finally make him stop" slandering the writer.

Trump's dramatic departure came minutes after Kaplan warned his lawyer she was risking being tossed into jail before summations began in the case.

"The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom," said Judge Lewis Kaplan.

Trump returned about an hour later after Carroll's attorney finished her summation, and just before his attorney began her closing argument.

Carroll in a 2019 New York magazine article wrote that in the mid-1990s, Trump had raped her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue, just up the street from the Trump Tower, where he lived and worked.

Trump denied her allegation at