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.

There is strong appetite among Chinese companies to list on U.S. stock exchanges, but these IPOs have become a more complicated process, according to Kobe Ge, the head of China at the New York Stock Exchange.

Despite the negative impact last year from Covid-19 restrictions and U.S. regulatory uncertainty, many of those issues are now resolved and “we still see very strong interest from Chinese businesses for listing in the U.S.,” he told CNBC’s East Tech West conference in the Nansha district of Guangzhou, China, on Tuesday.

But they’re not so familiar with the procedures, which have proved to be more challenging of late, he added. That’s according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.    

“Previously, listing in the U.S. was relatively easy,” Ge said, noting it would take just four-and-a-half or five months for Chinese firms to complete a U.S. IPO.

“Given some new procedures, a company may need to spend more time, a 12-month preparation period,” he said, pointing to new rules from the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

The new measures, effective since March 31, lay out a filing process for domestic companies wanting to list in the U.S. or Hong Kong, and require them to comply with national security measures and the personal data protection law before going public overseas. 

Amid a tepid U.S. IPO market, the handful of Chinese names that have been able to list this year have mostly been smaller companies.

Rising political tensions between Washington and Beijing have also led to uncertainty among Chinese companies and investors, said Ge.

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in August aimed at regulating new U.S. investments and expertise that supports China’s development of sensitive tech. The new measures, which is expected to be implemented next year, targets investment in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum computing and certain artificial intelligence capabilities.

“Of course, specifics haven’t been released yet, everyone may be watching and waiting, so it may cause investors to wait and see regarding these changes,” Ge said.

Still, Ge remained bullish that Chinese listings in overseas markets will rebound so long as domestic firms focus on building a strong business.

He likened the situation to a ship at sea. “Of course, everyone must pay attention to the weather, and at the same time they should pay more attention to whether the ship has been built well,” he said.

Today, that means investors are looking more for mature business models and predictable profits, rather than just high growth, he said. “So you need to build a very good ship.”

The overall U.S. IPO market should also improve in the April to October period next year, Ge said.

Robert H. McCooey, Jr., a vice chairman at Nasdaq, shared a similar view underlining there’s a strong pipeline of Chinese companies that intend to list on the exchange soon.

“I think it is 116 right now, that are on file or that we know will be filing soon,” he told a separate session at CNBC’s East Tech West event.

“And the much more interesting aspect of it is now with the new process by CSRC … everyone in China, everyone around the world gets to see the companies that are in the process, because the way that the regulations have come through,” he added, referring to the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

This is a marked increase from the 65 Chinese companies, McCooey highlighted in an earlier CNBC interview in June.

As of January 2023, there were 252 Chinese companies listed on the U.S. exchanges — including NYSE, Nasdaq, and NYSE American, — with a total market capitalization of $1.03 trillion, according to official data.  

“We’re delighted that we’ve had a couple of listings that have gone through the CSRC process … there’s three or four that should be approved in the near future,” he added. “I think that gives confidence to companies that are interested in listing outside of China.”

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.

WASHINGTON — Federal bank regulators are not considering any plans to insure all U.S. bank deposits, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told members of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday.

Several banking groups and consumer advocates have called for some kind of a universal deposit guarantee after the government refunded most of the uninsured deposits at two banks that collapsed earlier this month, California-based Silicon Valley Bank and New York-based Signature Bank.

“I have not considered or discussed anything having to do with blanket insurance or guarantees of all deposits,” Yellen told senators during a hearing on Capitol Hill to consider the Treasury Department’s 2024 budget request.

The comments helped to fuel a decline in the stock market, and a drop in regional bank shares.

The deposit guarantees for SVB and Signature set off a fierce debate in Washington over whether big banks that had taken excessive risks were getting a special bailout, while smaller banks were being forced to confront a rush of withdrawals — triggered by public fears about the big banks — without any special help.

“I’m very troubled,” said Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins. “It seems to me, by guaranteeing all of the deposits [at SVB] that you’re creating a situation where they are immune from losses … in a way that puts the well managed community bank at a competitive disadvantage. So I guess my question to you is, how is this fair?”

Yellen said that at the time, regulators weren’t thinking about giving one bank an advantage over any other bank. At the time, they were thinking about “the implications for the broader banking system because of the contagion potential,” she said.

That explanation has not been enough to satisfy small and mid-sized banks, however.

“If policymakers decide to provide unlimited deposit insurance to some institutions, they cannot leave others out—certainly not the community banks that have, as always, operated on a safe and sound basis,” Rebeca Rainey, CEO of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said in a recent statement.

While Yellen ruled out universal blanket deposit guarantees, she appeared to be open to other potential ways to help smaller banks offer additional insurance to large deposits.

One idea volunteered by Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin was to create a system where depositors who needed to keep cash in excess of the $250,000 FDIC limit could pay slightly higher bank fees, akin to an insurance premium, in order to secure a higher level of FDIC insurance.

“Shouldn’t I be able to buy or pay a little higher bank fee, to get protection … with a cap maybe at $10 million?” Manchin said to Yellen near the end of her testimony. “We’ve been talking … some senators have been talking back and forth … and I don’t think we should [craft legislation] without you all involved, showing us how to structure that.”

“I think this is very worthwhile, for you and your colleagues to be discussing what’s appropriate here,” Yellen replied. “And we would be more than willing to work with you to think this through.”

She added: “For the moment, we’re trying to stabilize the situation using the tools at our disposal.”

These efforts are starting to bear fruit, Yellen told a bankers group Tuesday. She said that “aggregate deposit outflows from regional banks have stabilized.”

But while the trends are moving in the right direction, the amount of money banks borrowed in the week ending March 15 from the Fed’s discount window set a new record at $153 billion, according to the Fed’s weekly report, a sum that suggests the banking sector is not quite stable yet.

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.”