2023-04-26 20:08:00
The writer who sued Donald Trump for allegedly raping her nearly 30 years ago told jurors in a civil trial today that the former president of the United States sexually assaulted and slandered 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 destroyed my reputation, and I’m here to try to get my life back,” she said.
Carroll, 79, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, seeks unspecified damages from Trump76, who leads the contenders for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in the 2024 campaign.
The lawsuit concerns an alleged encounter in a fitting room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store in late 1995 or early 1996, in which, according to her, Trump raped her until she could run away.
Carroll has sued Trump for defamation after he he denied her rape accusation in a post in October on his Truth Social platform, in which he claimed that he did not know her, that he was not her “type” and that she had made him up to sell her memoirs.
He has also filed a claim under the New York Adult Survivors Lawwhich allows adults to sue their alleged offenders long after the statute of limitations has expired.
At Bergdorf, Carroll recalled that she was leaving the store when Trump recognized her and raised his hand, prompting her to stop. Carroll said she and Trump joked around, describing her tone as “jocular,” with the businessman. trying to buy lingerie for another woman.
According to Carroll, Trump asked her to try on a piece of lingerie and she joked that he should try it on. Trump then ushered her into an open changing room, closed the door, pushed her against the wall, and pulled down her stockings.
At first, Carroll thought that helping Trump buy women’s underwear at a high-end store would simply be “a funny incident in New York”. Even when the then-businessman invited her into the fitting room when the two dared each other to try on a see-through jumpsuit, Carroll imagined it would be something similar to a script she had written for the Saturday Night Live comedy show. “But after a few minutes my only reason for being alive was to get out of that room,” the writer declared.
“Trump’s fingers entered my vaginawhich was extremely painful, extremely painful and he also inserted his penis,” he said.
“As I sit here today i can still feel itsaid Carroll, who tried to hold back tears as she described pushing him back.
Asked by his attorney if he told Trump “no,” Carroll replied: “I don’t remember saying it. I may have said it”. She added that she blamed herself at the time and that she feared losing her job and that Trump would retaliate if she reported him.
A jury of six men and three women is expected to decide whether you hold Trump liable for damages, and if so, how much you owe. Trump will not attend the trial, nor is he required to. But the former president kept up his criticism of Carroll in two posts Wednesday on Truth Social, prompting federal judge Lewis Kaplan to warn him that he could face more legal trouble if he kept talking about the case.
“Does anyone think I would take a woman then almost 60 years old that I didn’t know, from the front door of a very busy department store, me being very well known, to put it mildly!, to a tiny fitting room?!” Trump wrote.
“She didn’t scream? There are no witnesses? Nobody saw it?wondered Trump, who also called Carroll’s accusations “a made-up SCAM” and said: “This is a fraudulent and false story… Witch hunt!”
THE NATION
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