Donald Trump's defamation damages trial, which was adjourned Monday morning due to COVID-19 concerns, will resume Wednesday.

Judge Lewis Kaplan had originally said court would resume on Tuesday, but has now pushed that back a day.

"This Court functioned all the way through the worst of the COVID pandemic," Judge Kaplan said this morning before court was adjourned. "We conducted over a hundred jury trials right through the lockdowns and everything else. So we have gotten through all of that -- I'm sure we'll get through all of this too."

After Judge Kaplan adjourned the trial until Tuesday due to COVID-19 concerns, defense attorney Alina Habba asked him to postpone former President Trump's testimony until Wednesday because "tomorrow is the New Hampshire primary."

Trump, sitting at the defense table, appeared visibly irritated, actively conferring with Habba before she raised concerns about the timing.

The judge did not immediately rule on her request.

Carroll's attorneys opposed the delay.

The judge also denied the defense's latest motion for a mistrial, which they filed on Friday.

"The defense made a motion for a mistrial, again," the judge said. "That motion is denied."

Trump spent an additional 30 minutes inside the courthouse after the trial was adjourned, then drove off in his motorcade.

Court is adjourned Monday due to health concerns on the part of several participants.

The proceedings will resume Tuesday, pending everyone's good health, Judge Lewis Kaplan announced.

A juror reported feeling "hot and nauseous," so the judge sent him home for the day with instructions to get a COVID-19 test.

Additionally, defense attorney Alina Habba reported she is not feeling well. One or both of her parents had COVID-19 and she was exposed at a dinner with them three days ago, she said.

Habba said she had a fever 48 hours ago but a court-administered COVID-19 test this morning came back negative.

"We will not take testimony today," Kaplan said.

Former President Trump sat between Habba and her law partner Michael Madaio as the judge made the announcement.

"See you tomorrow, I hope," Judge Kaplan said.

If Donald Trump takes the stand as expected today, the judge in the case is likely to closely supervise his testimony based on the ground rules the judge has laid down for the trial.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who threatened to throw Trump out of the courtroom last week for making comments within earshot of the jury, established in a pretrial ruling that Trump is barred from arguing that he did not sexually abuse Carroll or that he never met her.

As Judge Kaplan has instructed the jury, it is not their responsibility to determine the truthfulness of Carroll's allegations because a jury last year already found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and then defaming her; their job is only to determine whether Trump will have to pay Carroll additional damages beyond the $5 million awarded in the earlier trial.

According, Kaplan ruled, Trump cannot argue that he believed the two statements he made in June 2019 denying Carroll's allegations.

Instructing the jury last week on the facts of the case, Kaplan said, "Because you must accept them as true, this trial is not a do-over of the previous trial which determined those facts. What remains for you to decide are only two very limited issues relating to damages for Mr. Trump's publication of those two statements."

E. Jean Carroll's attorneys ended their defamation case against former President Trump by showing the jury some of Trump's social media posts and soundbites from his campaign rallies in which he repeats the defamatory statements he has made about her.

The jury also saw a portion of Trump's videotaped deposition for Carroll's case that he sat for in October 2022, in which Trump was given a copy of the 2019 New York magazine article that first published Carroll's sexual assault allegation.

"Did you ever read this article?" plaintiff's attorney Roberta Kaplan asked in the deposition. "No," Trump responded.

Kaplan, in the deposition, also read Trump's defamatory response to the article and asked, "Do you stand by the statement?" Trump responded, "Yes."

The jury also heard Trump in the deposition affirm that he stood by a June 24, 2019, statement in which he said Carroll was "not my type."

"You meant she was not your type, physically right?" Kaplan asked. "Physically, she's not my type," Trump responded. "The only difference between me and other people is that I'm honest."

The jury also saw the excerpt of the deposition in which Trump was handed an old black-and-white photo of him, his first wife Ivana, Carroll, and her then-husband John Johnson, and temporarily mistook Carroll for his second wife Marla Maples.

After the confusion, Kaplan, in the deposition, asked Trump if the three women he married were his type, and Trump answered, "Yeah."

Trump, in the deposition, also conceded that he had no information about Carroll's political party or evidence that she was pursuing a political agenda.

The jury also saw an excerpt of a videotaped deposition Trump gave in April 2023 as part of Trump's separate civil fraud lawsuit in which Trump boasted about his wealth, and estimated that the value of his Mar-a-Lago resort is $1.5 billion -- possibly meant to show the jury that Trump can afford a large damage award.