The writer suing Donald Trump for allegedly raping her nearly 30 years ago began testifying on Wednesday at a civil trial, telling jurors the former US president sexually assaulted her and defamed her by lying about it.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he lied and said it didn’t happen,” E Jean Carroll said in Manhattan federal court. “He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try and get my life back.”
Ms Carroll (79,) a former Elle magazine advice columnist, is seeking unspecified damages from Mr Trump, who leads the Republican field in the 2024 presidential campaign.
She is suing over an alleged encounter in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996.
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Ms Carroll has said that after making small talk with Mr Trump as he sought help in buying lingerie for another woman, he bustled her into the dressing room.
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Once there, Mr Trump shut the door, forced her against a wall and raped her, until she was able to flee after two or three minutes, Carroll has said.
Mr Trump (76), is not attending the trial, nor is he required to be there.
But he stood by his criticism of Carroll in two posts on Wednesday on his Truth Social platform, prompting the judge to warn he could face more legal problems if he kept discussing the case.
“Does anybody believe that I would take a then almost 60 year old woman that I didn’t know, from the front door of a very crowded department store, (with me being very well known, to put it mildly!), into a tiny dressing room,” Mr Trump wrote. “She didn’t scream? There are no witnesses? Nobody saw this?”
He also called Ms Carroll’s accusations “a made up SCAM” and said: “This is a fraudulent & false story--Witch Hunt!”
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The posts prompted US District Judge Lewis Kaplan to tell Mr Trump’s legal team, outside the jury’s presence, that their client appeared to be “endeavouring, certainly, to speak to his quote-unquote public” and to the jury about matters that have “no business being spoken about.”
The judge added that Mr Trump could be “tampering with a new source of liability” if he continued.
Mr Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina told the judge he would speak with his client and “ask him to refrain from any further posts on this case.... I will do the best I can do.”
Ms Carroll is suing Mr Trump for defamation after he denied her rape claim in an October post on Truth Social. She is also suing under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which lets adults sue their alleged abusers long after statutes of limitations have run out.
A six-man, three-woman jury is expected to decide whether to hold Mr Trump liable for damages, and, if so, for how much. The trial is expected to last one to two weeks.
In her opening statement on Tuesday, Shawn Crowley, one of Ms Carroll’s lawyers, told jurors that the evidence made the trial more than a “he said, she said” dispute.
Possible witnesses for Ms Carroll include two friends in whom she confided about the alleged rape, and two other women who have accused Mr Trump of sexual assault.
Jessica Leeds accuses Mr Trump of assaulting her on a plane in 1979 by grabbing her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt. Natasha Stoynoff, a writer for People magazine, is expected to testify that in 2005, Mr Trump led her into an empty room and forcibly kissed her until he was interrupted.
When the two women spoke up, Mr Trump attacked them as liars in a similar manner to his response to Ms Carroll’s accusations.
In his opening statement, Mr Tacopina said he will show that Mr Carroll conspired with other women to falsely accuse the former president of sexual assault because they “hate” him.
He said Ms Carroll went after his client for political ends, to sell a book and for public attention and that if jurors in heavily Democratic Party-supporting Manhattan did not like Mr Trump, they should express themselves at the ballot box, not in court. - Reuters