A 72-hour state of emergency has been declared in Haiti after armed gangs stormed two of the country’s largest prisons, reportedly allowing thousands of people to escape.

A government statement said two prisons, one in the capital of Port-au-Prince and another in nearby Croix des Bouquets, were overrun by gang members over the weekend, according to multiple media reports.

Nearly all the 4,000 inmates at Haiti’s National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince were thought to have escaped.

CNBC could not independently verify the figures.

Haiti’s government on Sunday imposed a state of emergency and a night-time curfew in an attempt to restore order, with Finance Minister Patrick Boisvert reportedly calling on police to use “all legal means” to recapture the prisoners and enforce the curfew, according to Al Jazeera.

Boisvert is in temporary charge of the Haitian government while Prime Minister Ariel Henry is on an overseas trip to Kenya, looking to rouse support for a U.N.-backed security force to help prop the country after years of deadly gang violence.

Haitian lawyer Arnel Remy, head of the Collective of Lawyers for the Defense of Human Rights in Haiti, said in a Google-translated update on the X social media platform that a total of 3,597 prisoners escaped from the National Penitentiary.

The U.N. has warned the Haitian government’s presence “continues to erode,” with lawlessness and extreme gang violence casting a long shadow over everyday life in the crisis-stricken country.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says Haiti has faced a multitude of challenges in recent years, “encompassing political, social and economic issues, further exacerbated by recurring natural disasters.”

In a Google-translated post on X, one of Haiti’s police unions on Sunday called on all officers in the capital to assist in the battle to regain control of the prison. “No one will be spared in the capital because there will be 3000 extra bandits now effective,” the statement said.

The U.S. embassy in Haiti on Sunday issued a security alert, urging U.S. citizens to leave the country as soon as possible by commercial or other privately available transport options.

The embassy, which on Friday warned of heavy gunfire and traffic disruption near Port-au-Prince airport, said operations would be limited on Monday and that further activity may be affected due to “gang-related violence and its effects on transportation and infrastructure.”

Elon Musk is suing Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, among others, alleging they abandoned the company’s founding mission to develop artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity broadly.”

In a lawsuit filed Thursday with a San Francisco court, Musk’s lawyers said the tech billionaire was approached in 2015 by Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and agreed to form a nonprofit lab that would develop artificial general intelligence for the “benefit of humanity.”

A co-founder of OpenAI in 2015, Musk stepped down from the firm’s board in 2018, four years after saying that AI is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.”

“To this day, OpenAI, Inc.’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity.’ In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” the lawsuit filing said.

Musk’s lawyers said in the lawsuit that OpenAI’s focus on maximizing profits for Microsoft breaks that agreement.

“Under its new Board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity,” the filing said.

OpenAI and Microsoft were not immediately available for comment.

Musk’s lawyers said the suit was submitted “to compel OpenAI to adhere to the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world.”

Microsoft, which is facing scrutiny from EU antitrust regulators over its reported $13 billion investment in OpenAI, recently announced a new partnership with French start-up Mistral AI.

The U.S. tech giant said on Monday that it was investing in the company, which is regarded as Europe’s answer to OpenAI, to help it unlock “new commercial opportunities” and expand to global markets.

The legal action pits two of the world’s most prominent tech leaders against each other at a time of extraordinary hype over the future of AI.

Since debuting in November 2022, OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, has taken the world by storm. The AI tool quickly became the fastest-growing consumer application in history and kick-started the launch of rival chatbots from companies such as Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft.

Both Musk and Altman have been making headlines. Musk, considered the world’s richest person, runs electrical vehicle maker Tesla, rocket and satellite maker SpaceX, and bought X for $44 billion in October 2022. He recently reported the advances of the brain chip technology implants produced by his startup Neuralink.

Altman has meanwhile had a rocky relationship with OpenAI. He was suddenly fired from the company in November of last year, in a move that sent shock waves across the tech industry. The American entrepreneur — one of the leading figures in the AI boom — returned to the firm a few days later.

A federal jury on Friday said Donald Trump must pay E. Jean Carroll a total of $83.3 million in damages for defaming her in statements he made as president after the writer said he had raped her in a New York department store in the 1990s.

The massive civil verdict — which comes on top of a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation verdict that Carroll won against Trump last year — was delivered less than three hours after the nine-member jury began deliberating in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Trump was not in court for the reading of the unanimous verdict on compensatory and punitive damages by the anonymous jury at 4:40 p.m. ET.

But shortly afterward, he said in a social media post that he would appeal it.

“This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down, and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down,” Carroll said in a statement.

Her attorney Roberta Kaplan said, “Today’s verdict proves that the law applies to everyone in our country, even the rich, even the famous, even former presidents. There is a way to stand up to someone like Donald Trump who cares more about wealth, fame, and power than respecting the law.”

Jurors awarded Carroll $7.3 million in compensatory damages for emotional harm, and an additional $11 million in compensatory damages for harm to her reputation. Compensatory damages are awarded for actual losses suffered by someone.

They awarded her an additional $65 million in punitive damages after finding that Trump in a June 21, 2019, statement about Carroll had “acted maliciously, out of hatred, ill will or spite, vindictively or out of wanton, reckless, or willful disregard of Ms. Carroll’s right.”

Trump in those comments and others since then has denied ever meeting Carroll, suggested she made her claim to sell a book, and said she was not “my type.”

Punitive damages are meant to punish wrongdoing by a defendant.

Earlier Friday, Carroll’s lawyer in her closing argument had urged jurors to award her a “very large” amount of money, to make the billionaire former president “stop” slandering her.

“He doesn’t care about the law or truth but does care about money, and your decision on punitive damages is the only hope that he stops,” Kaplan said.

“How much will it take to make him stop? You cost him lots and lots of money,” she said.

Trump in a social media post on his TruthSocial site after the verdict wrote, “Absolutely ridiculous!”

“I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party,” wrote Trump, who is the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination.

“Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”

Trump so far has not received much help from appeals courts in challenging the two separate lawsuits by Carroll before they went to trial.

But it is possible that on appeal of the verdicts he could at least win a reduction in the amount of money he owes her.

Last month, the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s argument that he was immune from damages in the current case because he was president at the time he defamed Carroll.

The appeals court ruled that Trump had waived the potential defense of presidential immunity for not raising it for years after Carroll first sued him in 2019.

Trump last year posted $5.6 million as security while he appeals the verdict in the prior sex abuse and defamation case.

When he appeals the current case’s verdict, he will likely have to post more than $90 million in security.

Until the appeals are resolved, Carroll will not collect any money from Trump.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is not related to Roberta, told jurors before dismissing them from court: “My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury, and I won’t say anything more about it.”

Before their deliberations began, Judge Kaplan instructed them that they had to accept as facts that Trump “sexually assaulted” Carroll in the mid-1990s and defamed the writer in 2019.

“What remains for you to decide,” the judge 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.

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 the judge warned his lawyer Alina Habba that 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,” the judge said.

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 the time, saying she had made it up.

Another Manhattan federal court jury last year found he had sexually abused Carroll in the attack and had defamed her in statements he made in late 2022 denying her claims.

Kaplan ruled later in 2023 that that jury’s verdict meant that jurors in the current trial would have to accept as legally established that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll and had defamed her in his 2022 statements.

Trump on Friday posted several social media messages attacking Kaplan for rulings in the case, accusing the judge of having “absolute hatred of Donald J. Trump (ME!).” Trump’s Truth social account posted 14 times about Carroll when he was in the courtroom.

In her closing argument, Carroll’s lawyer Kaplan asked jurors to impose punitive damages on Trump for refusing to stop defaming Carroll even after a jury last year held him liable for doing so and ordered him to pay her $5 million.

Trump’s comments have sparked death threats and vicious emails and tweets directed at Carroll, the lawyer said.

“The dollar amount has to be very large,” Roberta Kaplan said. “It is at least as much and probably much more than the $12 million” that the lawyer noted an expert witness had testified it could cost to repair Carroll’s reputation after Trump accused her of inventing her claim.

“Last trial, Donald J. Trump didn’t even bother to show up, but this trial where it is about damages he has been sure to be here and the one thing he cares about his money,” Kaplan said.

Trump “is worth billions of dollars, he said that under oath, he could pay a million dollars a day for 10 years and still have money in the bank,” Kaplan said.

“When you begin deliberations I encourage you to step back and think of bigger picture, a former president of the United States who sexually assaulted, defamed and continues to defame.”

Earlier, Trump’s lawyer Habba, who had already irked Judge Kaplan for showing up late in court, angered him when she persisted in arguing that defense lawyers should be able to show a slide to jurors during their summation that represented some tweets related to Carroll.

“You are not going to use a slide to represent how many tweets there were, you are not using that slide, period,” Judge Kaplan said.

When Habba said, “I need to make a record,” referring to putting her argument on the record, the judge issued his warning.

“You are on the verge of spending time in the lockup, now sit down!” the judge told Habba.

Kaplan snapped at Habba several more times during her closing argument, at one point telling her that if she continued pressing a particular point “there will be consequences.”

In her summation, Habba said that Carroll “has failed to show she is entitled to any damages at all.”

“It is Ms. Carroll’s burden, not President Trump’s, to prove that his statements caused harm, and she failed to meet that burden, it is common sense,” Habba said.

The attorney also suggested that Carroll had made up her claims of receiving “thousands of threats.”

Carroll had testified that she deleted most of those threats, making them unavailable as evidence.

“Either Ms. Carroll is lying to you and those messages never existed in the first place or she deleted them and wants you to rely on them, and guess what, they are not here, and she has to give them to you to support her claim for damages, and that is a fact,” Habba said.

Habba also said that not only did Carroll “not suffer any emotional harm” after publishing her claim in 2019 about Trump raping her, “she was happier than ever.”

“She told Vanity Fair [magazine] that the support she received walking down the streets was heartwarming,” Habba said. “One of the most carefree and happy times of her life, that she was in a cocoon of love … does this sound like someone whose world has come crashing down, who can’t sleep?”

“She was enjoying the newfound attention she was receiving,” the lawyer said.

Before the arguments began and jurors entered the courtroom, the judge issued a warning.

“During closing arguments, no one is to say anything other than opposing counsel,” said Kaplan. “There are to be no interruptions or audible comments by anyone else and that will apply when I charge the jury and that will apply to counsel then as well.”

Carroll’s lawyers have complained during the trial about Trump making comments that were audible to jurors while sitting with his attorneys at the defense table.

Kaplan previously ruled that because of the prior verdict, there was no legal question that Trump defamed Carroll. That ruling left only the question of monetary damages remaining for the jury.

Trump during his very brief testimony in the trial Thursday said of Carroll’s claim, “I consider it a false accusation.”

Kaplan struck that testimony, in light of the prior jury’s verdict which found he had sexually abused Carroll.

Trump earlier this week defeated former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire. Last week, he won the Iowa GOP caucuses.

The defense attorney for Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta complained Friday that he received threats after special counsel Jack Smith revealed that a Mar-a-Lago IT director had admitted to giving false testimony in the former president’s classified documents criminal case.

The lawyer, Stanley Woodward, had represented IT director Yuscil Taveras when his client gave that false testimony to a grand jury, according to Smith’s recent court filing.

Only after Taveras dropped Woodward and got another lawyer did he change his story, admitting he was told to destroy security footage, Smith said in Tuesday’s filing.

Woodward on Friday blasted Smith’s filing as a “brazen and overt effort” to influence the case’s judge and “the court of public opinion” by quoting from a sealed document Woodward had previously submitted in connection with issues surrounding his representation of Taveras.

Woodward’s outrage toward the prosecutor was laid out in his new filing in federal court for the Southern District of Florida, after Smith raised concerns about the defense attorney’s potential conflicts of interest in the case.

Woodward currently represents Nauta and other witnesses in the case, but he no longer represents Taveras.

On Friday evening, Smith in a new filing responding to Woodward’s claims said that permission for public disclosure of “all information” related to a hearing in Washington on Woodward’s potential conflicts in the case “was expressly granted” on July 31 by a judge there after the special counsel requested authorization of such disclosure.

Trump, Nauta and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira are charged in federal court in Florida with crimes related to Trump’s retention of classified documents after leaving the White House. They have all pleaded not guilty.

Among other things, the defendants are accused of a scheme that aimed to erase surveillance security footage at Mar-a-Lago — Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida — showing boxes of classified records being moved around there by Nauta and De Oliveira.

Nauta’s legal fees are being paid for by Trump’s political action committee, according to public election commission filings.

Woodward disputes the idea that he currently has a conflict of interest, and he asked Judge Aileen Cannon in his filing Friday for a week to submit a detailed rebuttal explaining his position.

Woodward also revealed Friday that Smith’s disclosure of the Taveras situation has created blowback for the lawyer.

“In the time since the government’s submission, defense counsel has received several threatening and/or disparaging emails and phone calls.”

“This is the result of the Special Counsel’s callous disregard for how their unnecessary actions affect and influence the public and the lives of the individuals involved in this matter,” Woodward wrote.

De Oliveira is accused of asking Taveras to delete the footage at Trump’s behest.

On Tuesday, Smith filed a document raising concerns that Woodward has a conflict of interest because he might have to cross-examine his former client, Taveras.

Smith noted that Woodward was serving as Taveras’ lawyer when the IT director testified before a Washington, D.C., grand jury in March.

During that testimony, Taveras “repeatedly denied or claimed not to recall any contacts or conversations about the security footage at Mar-a-Lago,” Smith wrote.

On June 20, Smith’s office notified Taveras, “through Mr. Woodward … that he was the target of a grand jury investigation in the District of Columbia into whether he committed perjury” during his testimony in March, the prosecutor wrote in the filing.

After the chief federal district judge in Washington had a federal public defender give advice to Taveras about the potential conflict of being represented by Nauta’s attorney, Taveras told the judge “he no longer wished to be represented by Mr. Woodward,” Smith wrote.

And “immediately after” accepting the public defender as his new lawyer, Taveras “retracted his prior false testimony,” Smith wrote.

Taveras also “provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage, as set forth in the superseding indictment,” the prosecutor wrote.

Smith asked Cannon, the Florida judge, to schedule a hearing on Woodward’s alleged conflict of interests with “Mr. Woodward’s clients present and independent counsel available to provide them with advice should they so desire.”

In his filing Friday, Woodward wrote that Smith “did not, and still has not, alleged any actual conflict in defense counsel’s representation of Mr. Nauta.”

“It has not done so for the obvious fact that no conflict would arise unless and until Trump Employee 4 [as Taveras is identified in court filings] testified against Mr. Nauta,” Woodward wrote.

A New York federal judge warned JPMorgan Chase that he might find the bank in contempt of court if it does not speed up in producing evidence related to late sexual offender and money manager Jeffrey Epstein for lawsuits by an Epstein accuser and the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands, CNBC has learned.

Judge Jed Rakoff suggested in a notice that JPMorgan and two law firms representing the bank have been slow-walking in turning over documents and other evidence to plaintiffs in the case, under a process known as discovery, according to a source familiar with the notice.

The notice comes two weeks before JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is scheduled to be questioned under oath by plaintiffs’ lawyers for the civil suits, which accuse his bank of enabling and benefiting from Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking of young women.

“The Court also wishes to note that it is concerned that JPMorgan is not moving more expeditiously to produce responsive documents,” Rakoff wrote in the notice, which has yet to appear on the public docket in the case in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

“While the Court appreciates the large volume of discovery that is to be completed in this case, a company as large as JPMorgan and counsel as experienced as WilmerHale and Massey & Gail should be able to move with greater speed than what was revealed by this incident,” the judge wrote, referring to the bank’s two law firms.

“So JPMorgan is put on notice that further expedition will be needed on pain of being put in contempt of Court,” Rakoff wrote.

A JPMorgan spokesperson had no comment on the notice.

Epstein, who died from a jailhouse suicide in 2019 shortly after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges, was a long-time customer of the bank until 2013.

The lawsuits allege the bank allowed Epstein to remain a client despite evidence he was using millions of dollars he kept on deposit to facilitate his trafficking of girls and young women to his private island in the Virgin Islands and elsewhere.

Five years before JPMorgan ended its customer relationship with Epstein, he pleaded guilty in Florida state court to soliciting sex for money from an underage girl and served 13 months in jail.

Before his conviction, Epstein was friends with former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, as well as Prince Andrew of Britain.

JPMorgan denies any wrongdoing, and in its own civil complaint the company has said former bank executive Jes Staley would be legally responsible for any liability arising from its relationship with Epstein.

Staley spent three decades at JPMorgan and had close contact with Epstein — whom he considered a friend — over the years when Epstein was a customer.

Rakoff, in a court ruling published in early May, noted that “plaintiffs allege that Mr. Staley had first-hand knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.”

“Mr. Staley is alleged to have visited Epstein’s residences several times while that operation was ongoing, and, during these visits, observed [the Epstein accuser suing JPMorgan] ‘as a sexual trafficking and abuse victim,'” Rakoff noted.

“Plaintiffs further allege that Mr. Staley himself abused some of Epstein’s victims, including” the woman suing the bank, the judge wrote. That woman claims that “‘one of Epstein’s friends’ — whom she later identified as Mr. Staley — ‘used aggressive force in his sexual assault of her and informed [her] that he had Epstein’s permission to do what he wanted to her.'”

In his own court filing, Staley called the accusations against him “baseless,” and he has denied knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking.

Staley stepped down as CEO of British banking giant Barclays in late 2021 after an inquiry by a United Kingdom regulator into how he had characterized his relationship with Epstein to Barclays.

If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor.

Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday said it will pay $8.9 billion over the next 25 years to settle allegations that the company’s baby powder and other talc products caused cancer.

The company announced the proposed settlement in a securities filing. J&J’s subsidiary LTL Management also refiled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after its first attempt was thwarted, the filing said.

More than 60,000 claimants have committed to support the proposed resolution, which would require approval in bankruptcy court, the filing added.

“Resolving this matter through the proposed reorganization plan is both more equitable and more efficient, allows claimants to be compensated in a timely manner, and enables the Company to remain focused on our commitment to profoundly and positively impact health for humanity,” said Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, in a statement.

But J&J still pushed back on the talc allegations. 

“The Company continues to believe that these claims are specious and lack scientific merit,” Haas added.

The company ended sales of its talc-based baby powder globally this year after it faced thousands of lawsuits from customers claiming its talc products caused cancer due to contamination with the carcinogen asbestos.

J&J spun off LTL management in October 2021 in a bid to reduce its losses from litigation and settlement. The company funneled its talc lawsuits to the subsidiary and immediately filed for bankruptcy protection.

A judge affirmed J&J’s ability to use the Chapter 11 strategy in February 2022.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit overturned the ruling in January this year, saying neither LTL nor J&J had a legitimate need for bankruptcy protection because they were not in “financial distress.”

Leigh O’Dell, one of the lead attorneys representing plaintiffs in the talc lawsuits, told CNBC at the time that the ruling was another step toward ending J&J’s “attempted abuse of the bankruptcy system.”

O’Dell on Tuesday said in a statement to CNBC that J&J is “seeking an extremely deep discount on justice and is not really offering anything other than another bankruptcy and more delay, delay, and delay.

“This new filing should be viewed as a shameful attempt to run out the clock on people dying of cancer and convince some lawyers to give up,” she said.

Mikal Watts, one of the plaintiff lawyers who negotiated the proposed settlement, said J&J committed to “fairly compensate these deserving women” who have battled cancer due to the talc products. “Our job is to get our clients fairly paid for their injuries, and this settlement is the culmination of a job well done.”

J&J said last month it would take the case to the Supreme Court.

The company paid $7.4 billion in litigation expenses between 2020 and 2021, according to an annual filing. The company said talc litigation was a primary diver of legal costs during those years.

Editor’s note: This story includes a description of sexual assault.

A federal judge in New York on Friday rejected an effort by lawyers for former President Donald Trump to keep sealed a portion of the transcript of his deposition in a lawsuit by a writer who accuses him of raping her in the mid-1990s.

Trump’s arguments for keeping sealed the nearly three dozen pages of his Oct. 19 deposition “are entirely baseless,” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his order in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

That deposition showed Trump making repeated insulting comments about the writer who is suing him, E. Jean Carroll, her lawyer, and President Joe Biden, as well as grousing about what he called a series of “hoaxes” involving allegedly false claims made about him.

Trump, who denies raping Carroll or ever having sex with her at all falsely said that Carroll, in an interview about her claim of being raped by him, had indicated that “she loved it.”

“She said it was very sexy to be raped,” Trump testified, misstating what Carroll had actually said.

Trump has been accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct — he denies each claim — and bragged in a 2005 recording of the show “Access Hollywood” about grabbing women’s genitals and kissing them without their consent.

During questioning by Carroll’s lawyers, Trump denied ever kissing a woman without her consent.

“I can’t think of any complaints. But no, I mean, I don’t think so,” he said.

Asked whether he had ever touched a woman on her breast, buttocks or any other sexual part without her consent, Trump answered, “Well, I will tell you not, but you may have some people like your client that lie.”

The deposition was conducted at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, in connection with the first defamation lawsuit that Carroll filed against him in 2019.

Trump’s testimony under oath, was given a week after he issued a social media post that was cited in a second defamation lawsuit Carroll filed against him in November.

Earlier Friday, Kaplan denied Trump’s bid to toss out the most recent of two lawsuits filed by Carroll, who says Trump raped her in a dressing room in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan more than two decades ago.

In his unsealing order, Kaplan said that Trump had no right to confidentiality for his testimony when he gave it. The judge noted that there is a presumptive right held by the public to court documents.

The judge added that contrary to Trump’s argument, the portion of his transcript that was redacted in the public filing by Carroll’s lawyers “was directly relevant” to a disagreement between the parties over whether additional discovery should be conducted for her second lawsuit.

Discovery is the legal process in which parties in a lawsuit exchange evidence and take testimony from witnesses in preparation for trial, or a settlement.

Kaplan first ordered the deposition transcript unsealed on Monday. But he then reversed his order after Trump’s lawyers asked him for three days to file arguments opposing the unsealing.

Trump, while serving as president, publicly accused Carroll of making up the rape allegation, saying she was motivated by politics and a desire to sell a book containing her claims.

Carroll then sued him for defamation.

She sued him again in November when he made what she says were other defamatory statements about her in a social media post that Trump wrote in October.

Her second lawsuit also alleges battery, a claim that was allowed under a new New York state law that allows adults a one-year grace period to file lawsuits alleging sexual abuse that occurred outside of the time frame normally allowed by the statute of limitations.

Trial in the cases has been set for April.

Trump in his testimony flatly and repeatedly denied Carroll’s claim that he raped her.

“It’s a false accusation,” Trump said. “Never happened, never would happen.”

“I will sue her after this is over, and that’s the thing I really look forward to doing,” Trump told Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge.

“And I’ll sue you too,” he added toward Kaplan.

During the deposition, Trump fumed about Kaplan, who in addition to representing Carroll represents his niece, Mary Trump, in a lawsuit alleging that the former president and his siblings swindled Mary out of a share of the family’s wealth.

“How many cases do you have?” Trump asked Kaplan. “Many, many cases, and I know the statements … that you made. Keep Trump busy because this is the way you defeat him, to keep him busy with litigation.”

Trump during the deposition was asked about the Oct. 12 post he made on his social media site, which refers to the “Ms. Bergdorf Goodman case,” calling it “a complete con job.”

The post referenced a June 2019 interview Carroll gave CNN’s Anderson Cooper that described her account of the alleged sexual assault. She said it occurred after a chance meeting with Trump while she was shopping, and he allegedly asked her for help buying a present “for a girl.”

“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City department store and within minutes ‘swooned’ her,” Trump had written, Kaplan noted in her questioning.

Trump in his deposition confirmed Kaplan had read that, and the rest of the post accurately, saying, “Great statement, yeah. True. True.”

“I wrote it all myself,” he added.

Asked if he had talked to anyone about what to say in his post, Trump replied, “No, I didn’t need to. I’m not Joe Biden.”

Trump called Carroll a “wack job” during his deposition.

“I think she’s sick, mentally sick,” he said.

Kaplan then asked him about his use of the word “swooned,” which she called “a strange word.”

“What does ‘swooned her’ mean?” the attorney asked.

Trump replied, “That would be a word, maybe accurate or not, having to do with talking to her and talking her — to do an act that she said happened, which didn’t happen.”

“And it’s a nicer word than the word that starts with an F, and this would be a word that I used because I thought it would be inappropriate to use the other word,” Trump said. “And it didn’t happen.”

When Kaplan said that the dictionary defined “swooned” as “to faint with extreme emotion,” Trump replied, “Well, sort of that’s what she said I did to her.”

“She fainted with great emotion,” Trump said. “She actually indicated that she loved it. OK?,” he said, referring to Carroll’s CNN interview.

“She loved it until commercial break,” Trump said. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”

Kaplan then asked if Trump was testifying that Carroll “said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you.”

Trump answered: “Well, based on her interview with Anderson Cooper, I believe that’s what took place. And we can define that. You’ll have to show that. I’m sure you’re going to show that. But she was interviewed by Anderson Cooper, and I think she said that rape was sexy — which it’s not, by the way.”

He added, “But I think she said that rape was sexy.”

In fact, Carroll had said in that interview that she believed “most people” thought of rape as “sexy.” She did not say she believed that herself.

In that interview, Carroll said she was “panicked” when Trump shut the door of the dressing room and pushed her against a wall and began kissing her before pulling down her tights.

“And it was against my will. And it hurt. And it was a fight,” Carroll said in the interview.

She later said in the same interview, “I was not thrown on the ground and ravished. Which the word ‘rape’ carries so many sexual connotations.”

“This was not — this was not sexual. It just hurt,” Carroll said.

Cooper responded, “I think most people think of rape as … a violent assault.”

Carroll then said, “I think most people think of rape as being sexy … they think of the fantasies.”

When her lawyer Kaplan asked Trump if it was not true that Carroll had said it was a view of many other people about rape being sexy, he said, “Oh, I don’t know … All I know is, I believe she said rape is sexy or something to that effect, but you’ll have to watch the interview. It’s been a while.”

Trump later in the deposition noted that in his social media post he made what he called the “not politically correct statement” about Carroll.

“She’s not my type,” Trump told Kaplan. “She is not a woman I would ever be attracted to,” he added later.

“She’s accusing me of rape, a woman I have no idea who she is,” Trump said. “The worst thing you can do, the worst charge.”

“And you know it’s not true too,” he told Kaplan. “You’re a political operative too. You’re a disgrace.”

He later suggested that Kaplan had some kind of influence with the judge in the case to get him to grant her permission to depose him for the lawsuit. It is standard in lawsuits for attorneys to depose the parties in a case.

“I knew that we’d be wasting a day doing this, a whole day doing this,” Trump said. “You’ve got to be connected to get this kind of time. But a whole day of doing this stuff on something that never happened.”

Kaplan noted that Trump had said in his social media post that Carroll’s allegation was “a hoax and a lie, just like all the other hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years.”

When the lawyer asked if he meant Carroll had fabricated her claim, Trump said, “Totally, 100 percent.” He admitted that he used the term “hoax” a lot.

“I’ve had a lot of hoaxes played on me. This is one of them,” Trump said.

Asked what some of those were, Trump said, “The Russia Russia Russia hoax … Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine hoax.”

He pointed to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential connections between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

Trump also said the use of mail ballots during the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden, was a hoax.

“I think they’re very dishonest. Mail-in ballots, very dishonest,” Trump said.

Asked by Kaplan if he had himself voted by mail, Trump answered over the objections of his own lawyer, Alina Habba.

“I do. I do,” Trump said. “Sometimes I do. But I don’t know what happens to it once you give it. I have no idea.”

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump gathered Friday at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., before a closed hearing expected to deal with a request by the Department of Justice to hold Trump’s office in contempt of court.

The DOJ wants Judge Beryl Howell to find Trump’s office in contempt for its failure to comply with a grand jury subpoena issued in May demanding the return of any classified documents still in Trump’s possession or control, according to a person familiar with the issue who spoke to NBC News.

Howell is set to hold a hearing in the case Friday afternoon, which will be closed to the public. It is sealed because it relates to grand jury proceedings.

NBC News is part of a media coalition seeking access to the hearing.

Trump’s lawyers Evan Corcoran, Jim Trusty and Timothy Parlatore were seen arriving separately and then entering Howell’s chambers together around the time of the scheduled hearing, NBC reported.

The DOJ is conducting a criminal investigation of Trump for his failure to return government documents when he left the White House, as well as for obstruction of justice. An August FBI raid of his residence at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, found thousands of such records, more than 100 of which were marked classified or highly classified.

Trump last month announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

Former President Donald Trump was issued a subpoena Friday by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The committee, which voted unanimously on the move, is demanding Trump’s testimony under oath next month as well as records relevant to the probe into the attack, which the panel noted came after weeks of him denying losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

The panel had said on Oct. 13 that it would subpoena Trump, whose supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a joint session of Congress met to confirm Biden’s victory.

“We recognize that a subpoena to a former President is a significant and historic action,” the panel’s leaders wrote Trump in a letter Friday.

“We do not take this action lightly.”

Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in the letter cited what they called Trump’s central role in a deliberate, “multi-part effort” to reverse his loss in the 2020 presidential election and to remain in power.

The subpoena says that Trump would be deposed on Nov. 14, after the midterm elections.

It is not clear whether Trump will comply with the subpoena.

“As with any similar matter, we will review and analyze it, and will respond as appropriate to this unprecedented action,” said David A. Warrington, a partner at Dhillon Law Group, the firm representing Trump in the subpoena matter. In a statement sent by a Trump spokesman to NBC News, Warrington also accused the committee of “flouting norms” by publicly releasing the subpoena.

The records being sought by the House committee pursuant to the subpoena are due Nov. 4.

The records include documentation of telephone calls, text messages, or communications sent through the encrypted messaging app Signal, as well as photos, videos and handwritten notes relevant to the scope of the probe.

The panel specifically asked for communications to, and memorandums from, 13 Trump allies and fellow deniers of Biden’s victory, among them former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Republican gadfly Roger Stone, retired Army Lt. General Michael Flynn, and former White House aide Stephen Bannon.

Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail earlier Friday for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the same committee. He remains free pending appeal.

In their letter to Trump, committee leaders Thompson and Cheney accused him of “maliciously” making false allegations of election fraud, “attempting to corrupt the Department of Justice” to endorse those claims, pressuring state officials to change election results, and overseeing efforts to submit false electors to the Electoral College.

The letter also noted that he had pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to refuse to count Electoral College votes during the joint session of Congress.

“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” the letter said.

“You were at the center of the first and only effort by any U.S. President to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power, ultimately culminating in a bloody attack on our own Capitol and on the Congress itself,” the letter said.

The committee’s leaders pointed to the fact that seven presidents had testified to Congress after leaving office, most recently Gerald Ford, a Republican.

And at least two presidents, Ford and Abraham Lincoln, testified before Congress while serving in the White House, the letter noted.