Donald Trump trial: Accuser Carroll gives graphic account on how ‘Trump raped me’
Kaelan Deese
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Writer E. Jean Carroll took the stand in court Wednesday in the trial over her defamation and battery lawsuit against former President Donald Trump.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Carroll, 79, said, adding that the alleged defamatory remarks “shattered my reputation.”
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A jury of six men and three women will decide if Trump, 76, should be held financially liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in the mid-1990s and defaming her last year by saying on social media that she fabricated the allegation to sell a book.
Trump and his legal team say Carroll’s allegations are false and signaled today that they will seek to undermine her testimony by presenting evidence that she is motivated by an animus against Trump and that she waited too long to come forward with her claims if they were indeed true.
Carroll testified that she ran into Trump in late 1995 or early 1996 as she was exiting the Bergdorf Goodman department store.
Trump said, “Hey, you are that advice lady,” referencing her work as a columnist at the time, according to Carroll.
Carroll relayed that the pair began to talk and had a sort of joking or “joshing” series of exchanges before he asked her for advice on buying a gift. She said Trump suggested they look at lingerie, picked one up, asking her to try it on, adding that she suggested Trump should put it on.
Carroll added that she was “absolutely enchanted” with a scenario she thought would make for a good story.
Trump allegedly suggested they go to a dressing room, and soon after, they entered one and he closed the door, according to Carroll.
“He immediately shut the door and shoved me against the wall,” Carroll said, adding that her head bumped into the wall. Immediately after that, he pulled down her pants and penetrated her with his finger and his penis.
“When you ask me what I did in that moment, I always go back to ‘Why did I walk in there?'” Carroll said. “But I did get out,” she said, noting she used her knee to force Trump away and left as soon as possible.
She described contacting two friends soon after. One told her to go to the police, while another told her not to. She said that out of shame and fear of retaliation, she opted to stay silent.
A former human resources manager from the department store named Cheryl Beall described the sixth-floor lingerie section as a generally quiet and sparsely populated area, particularly on Thursday evenings, the day of the week Carroll believes the rape happened.
Trump’s legal team began its day in court with a reprimand from U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan after Trump posted on social media that the trial was a “scam” and commented on a wealthy Democratic donor who is funding Carroll’s suit.
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“We’re getting into an area in which your client may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability, and I think you know what I mean,” Kaplan said.
Carroll is seeking unspecified damages from Trump. She was able to elevate her defamation claims to include an additional battery claim after New York passed a law that provides adult victims a one-year window to sue their alleged abuser despite the previous statute of limitations barriers.