Two major developments in the former President's second defamation trial involving writer Eugene Carroll to tell you about, where a verdict is likely next week. Sources laid today saying that Trump is likely to appear in court again Monday, which would be the third time he's attended the trial. He, of course, does not have to appear, but as we've noted, has become a part of his unofficial campaign schedule. Also today, his legal team once again demanded a mistrial. This was over some emails deleted by Carroll. They claim her crucial. Now, earlier in the week, as we told you before, the judge denied the motion almost immediately after it was raised. Now, sometimes getting lost in this trial was the jury decision last year that underpins the current trial, that Donald J. Trump was guilty of sexual abuse. Kara Skanelle has more on that.

It happened nearly three decades ago in a New York Department store. Edvice columnist E Jean Carroll says she was leaving Bergdorff Goodman when she ran into Donald Trump.

He said, Come advise me. I want to buy a present. I said, Oh, for who? He said, For a girl. So I was enchanted.

Carroll says they went to the lingerie Department on the sixth floor and joked about who should try on a sheer bodysuit. She followed Trump into a dressing room. That's when she said a light-hearted encounter turned into a life-changing assault.

The minute I was in there, he shut the door and pushed me up against the wall and bang, bang my head on the wall and kissed me. It was so shocking.

She says Trump pinned her to the wall and pulled down her tights.

That was when it turned serious. I realized that this was a fight.

Carol says she fled the store and largely kept the 1996 encounter secret. It wasn't until June 2019 when she shared the story publicly. New York magazine ran an excerpt from her new memoir. Trump has continued to deny the encounter happened, and even knowing Carol.

I have no idea who this woman is. This is a woman who's also accused other men of things, as you know. It is a totally false accusation.

Carol first sued Trump in 2019 for defamation, but for years, he successfully tied the case up in litigation. In 2022, under New York State's Adult Survivors Act, she filed a second lawsuit against Trump, this time for battery and defamation. That case went to trial last year. Trump didn't appear in court, but his video deposition was played before the jury where he denied raping Carroll.

She said that I did something to her that never took place. There was no anything. I know nothing about this nut job.

He even mistook Carroll in a photo for his second wife, Marla Maples.

That's Marla. That's my wife.

Which woman are you pointing to?

Here.

When questioned about it, he defended the infamous the Infamous Access Hollywood tape, where Trump was caught off camera making rude remarks about women.

This is very old news. Fully litigated during debates, during everything else. Fully litigated. You know what I said then, and I say it now? Locker Room talk. That was Locker Room talk.

The jury ultimately found that Trump did sexually abuse Carol and defame her. They awarded Carol $5 million. But Trump didn't stop. One day after the verdict at a CNN town hall, Trump repeated his statements.

I swear, and I've never done that, and I swear to... I have no I have no idea who the hell... She's a whack job. Mr. President.

Carol updated her 2019 lawsuit, now seeking more than $10 million for Trump's repeated verbal attacks and denials. Meanwhile, the former President is squeezing in court appearances to his packed campaign schedule. His attorneys say he may testify next week.

Hello, New Hampshire.

Kara Scannell, CNN, New York.

Join now by conservative attorney, George Conway. George, can you just remind our viewers of how you met E Jean Carroll and what role you played in her decision to sue the former President?

Yeah, I met her one day in 2019, I guess it was right after about a week or two after the report of her story came out and the book came out and the excerpt in New York magazine came out, and I had written a piece in the Washington Post talking about how if anyone believed Wynnie De Broderick, who made the claims against Bill Clinton that Donald Trump trumpeted during the 2016 campaign, then they should really believe Jean Carroll as well, because she actually had witnesses who she told about the event right after it happened. I thought that it was pretty compelling and pretty persuasive. I ran into Jean Carroll just by happenstance at a cocktail party in Manhattan a few days after writing that piece. She came up to me and introduced herself and thank me for writing the piece in the Washington Post and asked, Some people are saying I should sue. Do you think I have a claim? I said, Yes. Immediately, it took basically no thinking. It's like, he's lying about you, and that's a defamation. That's defamation claim. Then about 10 seconds later, I thought, Oh, I know precisely the lawyer who should be handling this, an excellent lawyer who would become a friend of mine, Robbie Kaplan, who has been since that day representing her.

That's how I got to know Jean Carroll, and that's how she met her lawyer, and the rest is what we have now.

Yeah, as you know, Elina Hobb, the former president's attorney, questioned Carol this week about her association with you, asked if you'd planted the seed for her to sue the former president. Does it matter in any legal sense who, if anyone, advises a plaintiff to file a lawsuit?

No, not at all. It came out in the first trial. I mean, in fact, E. Jean's lawyer brought that out just so that there's no secret there, nothing to hide there. But it's also completely irrelevant. But for some reason, Trump and his counsel seem obsessed that fact. They brought it up consistently again and again in the first trial to the point where the judge had to tell them to stop. Then they're doing it again this week. I'm flattered by it, but it's just bizarre, frankly.

What do you make of how Trump has handled this phase of the case?

Well, look, I think that this whole case is something of a microcosm of, frankly, his mental state. No, his tendency to lie and lie again, his tendency to attack. I mean, he lied about the fact that he never met her when, in fact, there was a photograph that came out of her with him in the 1990s. He then lies about what happened. He then lies about... He says that she She's not his type. He said that in 2019. It turns out then he confuses her, as you saw, as that excerpt showed, for his former wife, Marla Maples, which means that she must have been his type. It's just the craziness of it all. Then the fact that he continually, after being found to have defamed her, and after a jury found that he raped her, he's then continually to assert that it didn't happen again and again, and he's doing it outside the courtroom. It's just crazy. Inside the courtroom, his lawyers are trying to minimize what he did and minimize what happened. Yet he's repeating the lies over and over again and repeating the defamination, which completely defeats what his lawyer is trying to do inside the courthouse.

It's crazy.

George Conway. Thank you.Thank you.I appreciate it.