E. Jean Carroll breaks down on the stand in Donald Trump rape trial
‘I’m here because Donald Trump raped me.’ E. Jean Carroll breaks down on the stand as she tells how the ex president shoved her against a wall before sexually assaulting her and then ‘shattered her reputation when he lied about it’
- Magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll took the stand Wednesday to tell how Donald Trump allegedly raped her
- She winced while telling the jury that even today she still can feel how ‘extremely painful’ it was when Trump allegedly forced himself upon her
- Trump has denied the claims and said that Carroll made them to boost sales of her 2019 memoir
E. Jean Carroll has taken the stand to tell how Donald Trump allegedly her in a department store dressing room in the mid-90s.
‘I’m here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it he said it didn’t happen,’ Carroll said when questioned by her lawyer. ‘He lied and shattered my reputation and I’m here to try to get my life back.’
The magazine columnist broke down before a jury as she described how after flirting with the former president he suddenly flipped and shoved her up against the wall, banging her head.
She winced while telling the jury that even today – 27 years after the incident – she still can feel how ‘extremely painful’ it was when Trump allegedly forced himself upon her.
Magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll took the stand Wednesday to tell how Donald Trump allegedly raped her
Carroll winced while telling the jury that even today she still can feel how ‘extremely painful’ it was when Trump allegedly forced himself upon her
The 79-year-old said that during the attack ‘my whole reason for living at that moment was to get out of that room.’
The trauma of the alleged rape was so severe that it left her ‘unable to ever have a romantic life again.’
The testimony emerged on the second day of the case in New York filed by Carroll for battery and defamation.
She claims that after she wrote about the incident for the first time in her 2019 memoir Trump tried to ‘destroy’ her with online threats.
Giving evidence in a navy blazer, navy dress and white shirt, Carroll described how she became a media personality in the 1990s in New York thanks to her long running advice column for Elle magazine and TV show that was inspired by it.
Carroll said that in either late 1995 or early 1996, she was in the Bergdorf Goodman department store and about to leave when she saw Trump by the exit door.
She had previously met him and thought he was a ‘raconteur’, which she told the jury meant a ‘sophisticated man who is entertaining to be around.’
Carroll thought Trump was attractive as he was ‘very personable,’ she told the jury.
That day in Bergdorf’s, she said Trump asked her to help him choose a present for a girl he knew.
Carroll told the jury it was a ‘wonderful prospect’ and she looked forward to regaling her friends with the story later on.
When Trump asked her age she said she was 52 and he replied: ‘You’re so old’ but she laughed, admitting she was ‘flirting’ with him and was ‘absolutely enchanted’.
After Trump suggested they go to the sixth floor to look at lingerie they carried on ‘joshing’ with each other, Carroll told the jury.
Inside a glass covered case was a see-through grayish blue bodysuit and Trump grabbed it and told her: ‘Go put this on.’
Carroll told the jury she had ‘no intention’ of doing so and told Trump to put it on instead. He motioned towards the dressing room and she followed with him, thinking it was like a sketch for the comedy show Saturday Night Live, where she briefly worked as a writer.
As Carroll recalled, the ‘comedy was escalating, it was getting funnier and funnier’ and she ‘didn’t picture anything was about to happen’.
Once they got inside the room Trump ‘immediately shut the door.’
Carroll told the jury: ‘He shoved me up against the wall so hard my head banged. I was extremely confused and suddenly realizing what I thought was happening was not happening.
‘I was very rapidly trying to figure out what was going on. I pushed him back and he thrust me back against the wall again, banging my head again.’
Carroll admitted that she carried on laughing as she ‘didn’t want to make a scene.’
She said: ‘I didn’t want to make him angry.’
The encounter had turned from ‘light to absolutely dark’ in a second.
Carroll told the jury: ‘He put his shoulder against me and held me against the wall. He’s very large and his whole weight came against my chest and held me up there (against the wall).
‘I was pushing him back. I was quite clear, I didn’t want anything else to happen.
‘I didn’t scream. I’m not a screamer, I’m a fighter’.
While Carroll agreed that Trump tried to kiss her, she described it as Trump putting his mouth against me.’
‘I didn’t consider it a kiss,’ she said.
She said: ‘I was almost too frightened to think I was afraid or not. I was stamping. My whole reason for living at that moment was to get out of that room. I was stamping and trying to wiggle out from under him but he pulled down my tights and his finger went into my vagina, which was extremely painful.
‘As I’m sitting here today I can still feel it. Then he inserted his penis (inside me).’
Bergdorf Goodman (above) is only a block away from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue
Donald Trump in 1987 with his first wife, Ivana, rape accuser E. Jean Carroll and Carroll’s then-husband
Trump would have been married to Marla Maples at the time of the alleged rape. Maples had given birth to daughter Tiffany in 1993 (above)
Asked by her lawyer Michael Ferrara what she did next, Carroll became emotional and cried.
She said: ‘I tried…when you ask me what I did in that moment I always think back to why I walked in there (the dressing room) to get myself in that situation.’
Carroll told the jury that while she couldn’t see what Trump was doing she could feel it. Trump did not ejaculate and after a few minutes of fighting she was able to get her knee up to him and push him off.
She ran out of the store and immediately called her friend Lisa Birnbach, a journalist and author who told her to call the police.
But another friend Carol Martin told her to keep quiet as Trump would ‘bury her’ with legal threats – so she kept quiet until 2019 when she went public in her memoir.
In the days after the alleged rape Carroll felt ‘extremely rattled’ and in pain in her private parts. She said: ‘I didn’t know who I was, I couldn’t believe it happened to me. It was very, very difficult and it took a long time to calm down.’
She feared she would be seen as ‘soiled goods’ if people knew she was a rape victim so she kept quiet.
Carroll, who has been married twice, told the jury that now she feels that going into the dressing room with Trump was ‘very stupid’.
She said: ‘I know people have been through a lot worse but it left me unable to ever have a romantic life again.’
Trump is represented by Joe Tacopina, the barrel-chested attorney who is representing him in the criminal case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney, and five other attorneys
Protesters are pictured outside of Manhattan Federal Court on Tuesday
Earlier Judge Lewis Kaplan admonished Trump for a post on Truth Social, his own social network, on Wednesday morning.
The post said the allegations were a ‘SCAM’ and that the dress Carroll was wearing that day should be part of the case, likening it to the dress worn by Monica Lewinsky during her affair with Bill Clinton.
Judge Kaplan said Trump was ‘endeavoring to speak to his ‘public’ but more troubling to the jury in this case about stuff that has no business being spoken about’.
Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said he would talk to the former President.
Judge Kaplan warned that Trump’s statement was ‘on the face of it entirely inappropriate.’
He said: ‘You’re getting into an area conceivably 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.’
The case was brought under a law passed by New York State called the Adult Survivors Act which opened a one year window to bring sex crimes cases even if they were outside of the statute of limitations.
In his opening argument Tacopina said the case was politically motivated by Carroll as she ‘loathed’ the former president.
Tacopina said that Carroll ‘schemed’ with her two friends she claims she called right after the rape because they couldn’t stand Trump being president.
The allegations as recounted Carroll was ‘unbelievable’ and a ‘sick story’ written so she could boost sales of her 2019 memoir in which she first went public with the claims, Tacompina said.
The case is expected to last up to two weeks and it’s unclear if Trump will appear.
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