Carroll, 79, filed her lawsuit last year against Trump, 76, claiming he raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996, and then defamed her by denying it happened. The former Elle magazine advice columnist is seeking unspecified monetary damages.
Trump, who served as president from 2017 to 2021 and is the current front-runner for the Republican US presidential nomination in 2024, has said Carroll made up the allegation to drive sales of her 2019 memoir.
Her defamation claim concerns an October 2022 post on Trump’s Truth Social platform in which he called her allegations a “complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie”.
Carroll said during three days of testimony and cross-examination that during the alleged attack, Trump slammed her against the wall, put his fingers into her vagina and then inserted his penis.
At trial, her lawyers showed jurors a videotape of Trump giving a deposition in which he is shown a picture of him and Carroll together at an event. In the video Trump is seen mistaking Carroll for his former wife, Marla Maples.
“The truth is that E Jean Carroll, a former cheerleader and Miss Indiana, was exactly Donald Trump’s type,” Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, said during closing arguments. “Donald Trump here is a witness against himself.”
Two of Carroll’s longtime friends testified that she told them about the attack shortly after it occurred and said they believed her. Jurors also heard from two other women who said Trump sexually assaulted them in separate alleged incidents decades ago. Trump denies those claims as well.
In a video deposition played for the jury last Wednesday, Trump denied raping Carroll.
“It’s the most ridiculous, disgusting story,” Trump said in the video, hunched over a conference table as Carroll’s lawyers presented documents to him. “It’s just made up.”
Source: CNA
