Trump attorney alleges money motive
Trump’s legal team sought to undercut Carroll’s credibility after she testified Wednesday in vivid detail that Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996.
Court sketch of E Jean Carroll standing on one leg, showing a jury how she was able to push Donald Trump away from her and escape from a dressing room during an alleged assault.Credit: Associated Press
Tacopina suggests that only if she “want to make money from her memoir,” What do we need men for? She said it.
“For twenty years, Ms. Carroll, you have never told the police or revealed this story in your hundreds of columns,” Tacopina said to Carroll.
He pressured her that she couldn’t recall exactly when she met Trump, prompting her to say “I hope to heaven” that she had an exact date.
When Tacopina said she “should” have been raped, Carroll objected. She said the rape happened.
“These are the facts,” Carroll said.
Carroll testified Wednesday that Trump, who was buying underwear for another woman in Bergdorf, coaxed her into a dressing room, threw her against a wall and raped her.
Trump has consistently denied Carroll’s allegations and said she made them up to sell her memoir and hurt him politically, a subject Tacopina addressed.
Trump, 76, is leading the Republican field in the 2024 presidential race.
He did not attend the trial and was not required to. Trump held a scheduled campaign event in New Hampshire on Thursday.
‘An opportunity to be heard’, says Carroll
Carroll, a registered Democrat, is seeking unspecified damages from Trump, arguing his denials have ruined her career and sparked a spate of ongoing online harassment.
She sued Trump for assault under the Adult Survivors Act, a 2022 New York state law that allows adults who claim they have been sexually abused to sue their alleged assailants even if the statute of limitations has expired.
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Carroll is also suing for defamation over an October 2022 post on Trump’s Truth Social platform in which he called rape a hoax and a hoax, saying Carroll “wasn’t my type! ’ and accused Carroll of making up stories to sell her memoir.
On Thursday, before cross-examination, Carroll concluded questioning by her attorney, Michael Ferrara.
She insisted that suing Trump was a means of “getting my name back,” and denied she was doing it for publicity or revenge.
Carroll said she was hit by a “wave of slime” from an “almost endless flow” of people repeating Trump’s social media posts.
“I like the attention,” she said. “I especially don’t like the attention you get for suing Donald Trump. It’s hard to get the attention for being raped.”
Tacopina is expected to continue grilling Carroll when the trial resumes on Monday. The trial is expected to last one to two weeks.
Bernbach, co-author Official Pre-College Handbookand Martin, a former New York City news anchor, is expected to testify on Carroll’s behalf.
The trial is expected to last one to two weeks.
