Donald Trump was threatened with expulsion from his trial after he was repeatedly told to keep his voice down.
The former president is facing charges that he defamed the longtime Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexual abuse. A trial found in her favour.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan initially warned Trump about being disruptive during Ms Carroll’s testimony but then her lawyer Shawn Crowley complained that Trump could be heard “loudly saying things” while his client was speaking.
Mr Crowley argued that, if he and his colleagues could hear Trump, the jury might be able to as well. Some reportedly appeared to split their focus between Trump and the witness stand.
The comments heard are said to have included "it is a witch hunt" and "it really is a con job”.
After the jury was excused for lunch, Mr Kaplan eventually told Trump: “I hope I don't have to consider excluding you from the trial - I understand you're probably very eager for me to do that."
"I would love it," the Republican presidential front-runner shot back, shrugging.
Mr Kaplan responded: "I know you would. You just can't control yourself in these circumstances, apparently.”
"You can't either," Trump muttered.
Afterwards, Trump criticised Mr Kaplan in brief remarks to journalists at an office building he owns near the courthouse.
He called the Bill Clinton appointee "a nasty judge" and a "Trump-hating guy," echoing his own social media posts that Mr Kaplan was "seething and hostile," and "abusive, rude, and obviously not impartial”.
On Wednesday, Mr Kaplan denied a request from Trump's lawyers that he step aside from the case.
Trump, fresh from a record-breaking win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, has made his various legal fights part of his campaign.
He sat in on jury selection Tuesday, then jetted to a New Hampshire rally before returning to court Wednesday and repeating the cycle with another Granite State event Wednesday night.
Ms Carroll was the first witness in a Manhattan federal court trial to determine damages, if any, that Trump owes her for remarks he made while he was president in June 2019 as he vehemently denied ever attacking her or knowing her.
Last year, a jury found that Trump sexually abused her and defamed the writer in a round of denials in October 2022.
She testified: "I'm here because Donald Trump assaulted me and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened. He lied and he shattered my reputation.
"He has continued to lie. He lied last month. He lied on Sunday. He lied yesterday. And I am here to get my reputation back and to stop him from telling lies about me.”
She spoke about once being “a respected columnist” but now known “as the liar, the fraud and the whack job”.
She became emotional as she read through some of the hundreds of hateful messages she had received from strangers, apologising at one point to the jury for reading the nasty language aloud.
Ms Carroll said Trump's smears "ended the world" she knew, costing her millions of readers and her "Ask E. Jean" advice column, which ran in Elle for more than 25 years. But the magazine has said her contract ended for unrelated reasons.
Carroll said her worries about her safety after a stream of death threats led her to buy bullets for a gun she inherited from her father, install an electronic fence, warn her neighbours of threats and unleash her pit bull to roam freely on the property of the small cabin in the mountains of upstate New York where she lives alone.
She took the stand after a hostile encounter between one of Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, and Mr Kaplan, over the judge’s refusal to adjourn the trial on Thursday so Trump could attend the funeral for former first lady Melania Trump's mother, Amalija Knavs, who died last week.
Ms Habba called Judge Kaplan's ruling "insanely prejudicial" and the judge soon afterwards cut her off, saying he would "hear no further argument on it."
The attorney replied: "I don't like to be spoken to that way, your honour."
When she mentioned the funeral again, the judge responded: "It's denied. Sit down."
It culminated in Trump slamming his hand on the defence table and uttering the word "man".
A court already found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s and then defamed her in 2022, so this new trial concerns only how much more — if anything — he'll be ordered to pay her for other remarks he made in 2019 while he was president.
Ms Carroll accused Trump of forcing himself on her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996.
Then, she alleges, he publicly impugned her honesty, her motives and even her sanity after she told the story in a 2019 memoir.
Trump, 77, asserts that nothing ever happened between him and Ms Carroll, 80, and that he never met her.
He says a 1987 party photo of them and their then-spouses "doesn't count" because it was a momentary greeting.
Trump did not attend the previous trial in the case last May, when a jury found he had sexually abused and defamed Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. The jury said, however, that Carroll hadn't proven her claim that Trump raped her.
Ms Carroll is now seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages.
