Trump to carry out rape and defamation trial with no witnesses coming to his defense

In the ongoing rape and defamation trial between E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump, defense had been planning on  testimony from psychiatrist Dr. Edgar Nace to aid in the former president’s plea of innocence, but that is now off the table.

On Wednesday, Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina broke the news that Nace will no longer be available to testify due to “health issues,” leaving Trump to carry out the remainder of the trial with zero witnesses speaking on his behalf.

Leading up to this latest news of Trump’s defense plan, Tacopina said that his client will not “personally appear at the trial,” and that they’ll be relying on cross-examination of the plaintiff’s witnesses to provide necessary information to the court.

“After they testify under questioning by plaintiff’s counsel, we get to question them,” Trump’s lawyer said in a quote obtained from Insider. “That’s where our defense is in this case. It’s coming out through the questioning of their witnesses. That’s our entire defense.”

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As Salon reported this week in our ongoing trial coverage, Carroll’s own bank of witnesses is comparatively flush.

On Tuesday, author and journalist Lisa Birnbach, whom Carroll phoned “immediately after being raped by Trump at a Bergdorf Goodman department store fitting room in the 1990s,” provided testimony in Manhattan federal court.

“I am here because my friend, my good friend, who is a good person, told me something terrible that happened to her, and, as a result, she lost her employment and her life became very, very difficult,” Birnbach said “I want the world to know that she was telling the truth.”

Retired stockbroker Jessica Leeds also took to the stand on Tuesday to speak on Carroll’s behalf, saying she was “groped by the ex-president on an airplane in 1979.”

Trump has made no statement thus far pertaining to the situation of his defense witnesses, or lack thereof.