NEW YORK — Writer E. Jean Carroll testified in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday, relating a harrowing story of being raped by Donald Trump in the mid-1990s, as the former president — who has declined to attend the trial — railed at her on social media, infuriating the judge overseeing the case.
Carroll’s wrenching testimony stood in sharp contrast to the former president’s postings, in which he called her case a “made-up SCAM” and a “fraudulent &false story” and led the judge, Lewis Kaplan, to suggest Trump was improperly trying to influence the jury.
Trump’s lawyer said he would have a conversation with his client.
It was the second day of a trial in a lawsuit by Carroll against Trump, brought under a new law in New York that allows sexual assault victims to sue the people they say abused them, even if the statute of limitations has long expired. Trump vehemently denies the allegations.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Carroll said shortly after taking the witness stand. “He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try and get my life back.”
Carroll told jurors she ran into Trump at a Manhattan department store when he suggested she try on a bodysuit in the lingerie department and coaxed her into the dressing room. She said he immediately shut the door, shoved her against the wall and assaulted her.
That was the moment, she said, that her romantic life ended. “If I meet a man who is a possibility, it’s impossible for me to even look at him and smile,” Carroll said.
Carroll’s lawyers are asking the jury in U.S. District Court to find Trump liable for battery and defamation, and if he is found responsible, to award monetary damages. Carroll, 79, a former magazine columnist, said nothing publicly about the encounter for decades before publishing a memoir in 2019 that accused Trump of attacking her.
Trump, 76, has accused Carroll of lying and has attacked her repeatedly in public statements and on social media, both while in office and after leaving.