Former President Donald Trump has arrived in court this morning.

The proceedings, which were scheduled to get underway at 9:30 a.m. ET, were off to a late start.

If former President Trump takes the stand in his own defense today, it will happen after Carroll's attorneys rest their case.

Carroll's lawyers plan to call one final witness: Robbie Myers, the former editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, where Carroll was an advice columnist.

As part of the defense's case, Trump's lawyers also plan to call Carol Martin, a friend of Carroll's who testified in the earlier assault and defamation trial.

In a post to his Truth Social platform overnight, former President Trump indicated that he will attend his defamation damages trial today.

"But now I'm heading back to New York City for a trial based on False Accusations, from perhaps decades ago -- The woman has no idea when!" Trump wrote. Carroll has accused Trump of assaulting her around 1996 but can't pinpoint the year.

In a series of other posts, Trump also disparaged Carroll, said she made up her story, and suggested she was a paid political operative.

If Trump takes the stand today, he would be banned from using any of those defenses based on a pretrial ruling by Judge Lewis Kaplan which determined that -- because a jury last year already found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and then defaming her -- Trump is barred from arguing that he did not sexually abuse Carroll or that he never met her.

Former President Trump's defamation damages trial has been postponed an additional day and is scheduled to resume on Thursday morning.

The postponement was announced in an update posted to the court's docket.

The trial was adjourned Monday morning due to COVID-19 concerns.

After walking out of the courtroom, former President Trump remained absent for the remainder of the plaintiff's closing statement, during which E. Jean Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan asked the jury to punish Trump for the "humiliation and mental anguish" he inflicted on Carroll.

"The evidence was as shocking as it was unmistakable," the attorney said. "Imagine for a second what it would feel like to go to sleep in one world and wake up in another world, one in which the president of the United States ... is attacking you.

Death threats followed death threats, which the lawyer said is what Trump wanted. "Donald Trump had said that Ms. Carroll should pay dearly and that Ms. Carroll had entered into dangerous territory," she told the jury.

She said the jury's compensatory damages award should include the cost to repair Carroll's reputation, which an expert testified could cost as much as $12 million.

"While Ms. Carroll built that career over five decades, Donald Trump shattered it in a matter of hours," she said. "People are not dying to write to an advice columnist who the president says is a disgrace."

The attorney also asked the jury to award punitive damages, arguing the defamation has not ceased, even after an earlier trial last May held him liable for sexual assault and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.

She declined to name a dollar figure for the award, but said it should be at least as much as the $12 million repair campaign plus additional compensatory and punitive damages.

She urged the jury to consider one question: "How much will it take to make him stop?"

"You actually have the opportunity, maybe even a responsibility, to put an end to this by requiring Donald Trump to pay an amount of money large enough for him that it will finally make him stop," she said.