In a letter addressed to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, Joe Tacopina, the attorney representing former President Donald Trump, requested a mistrial on Monday, alleging that the judge presiding over the federal civil proceedings in the rape case has consistently displayed bias against his client. Tacopina cited numerous instances of what he referred to as "unfair and prejudicial rulings" by Judge Kaplan as the basis for his mistrial request.

Mistrials are infrequently granted despite being requested frequently at trials. Therefore, Tacopina likely hoped that the judge would fulfill his alternative requests instead. Among these requests, Tacopina urged Judge Kaplan to either correct any rulings that inaccurately portrayed the evidence or allow Tacopina to have more flexibility in questioning E. Jean Carroll, a columnist who filed a lawsuit against Trump in November using a New York state law that allows sexual assault victims to sue their attackers temporarily, even if the attacks occurred several decades ago.

The trial, which began last week, featured testimony from Carroll, who is now 79 years old. She recounted how Trump allegedly raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store located in midtown Manhattan, possibly in the spring of 1996. Carroll described a chance meeting that initially appeared to be lighthearted and flirtatious, but turned violent when Trump attacked her in the dressing room.

Despite the allegations made against him, Trump, who is now 76 years old, has consistently denied that any rape occurred. He has also denied being present with Carroll at the department store and has claimed that he did not know her, except for brief encounters when they appeared in photographs together in other years.

In response to the allegations, Trump publicly denied the accusations and hurled insults at Carroll, leading her to include a defamation claim in her lawsuit against him. Additionally, Trump claimed that Carroll's accusations were politically motivated and an attempt to boost sales of her 2019 memoir, in which she first made her rape claims public while Trump was still serving as president.

During her testimony, Carroll stated that she would have never disclosed her allegations had it not been for the #MeToo movement that emerged in 2017.

Carroll testified that if her rape accusation was false, she would have claimed that she screamed during the assault because it would have been a more believable detail.

In his request for a mistrial on Monday, Tacopina claimed that Judge Kaplan impeded his line of questioning when he pressed Carroll to clarify why she didn't scream during the alleged assault, why she didn't notify the police, or why she didn't attempt to obtain surveillance footage from video cameras at the store's entrances to demonstrate that she and Trump were together there.

As a matter of policy, The Associated Press generally refrains from identifying individuals who claim to have been sexually assaulted unless they have chosen to make their identities public, as Carroll has done.