Final arguments heard in Trump rape trial
Attorneys for writer E. Jean Carroll ask jurors to ‘pick a number’ for damages.
NEW YORK — Donald Trump should be held accountable for sexually attacking an advice columnist in 1996, because even a former president is not above the law, a lawyer for E. Jean Carroll told a jury Monday in closing arguments in the lawsuit accusing Trump of rape.
A lawyer for Trump responded by calling the accuser’s account “unbelievable” and “outrageous.”
After the final arguments, the judge sent the jurors home, telling them to return Tuesday to hear instructions before beginning deliberations. The jury will be asked to decide whether Trump committed battery and defamed Carroll and whether damages should be awarded.
In recapping Carroll’s case, attorney Roberta Kaplan showed jurors video of Trump from his October deposition and replayed the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which he said into a hot mic that celebrities can grab women’s genitals without asking.
Kaplan recalled Trump’s comment that “stars like him can get away with sexually assaulting women.”
“That’s who Donald Trump is. That is how he thinks. And that’s what he does,” Kaplan said. “He thinks he can get away with it here.”
Kaplan used Trump’s words to support Carroll’s allegations that he raped her in spring 1996 in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store across the street from Trump Tower.
Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, attacked the allegations as absurd, saying they were an “affront to justice” and minimized “real rape victims.”
He agreed with Kaplan that no one is above the law but warned that “no one’s below it.”
Referring to Carroll, Tacopina told jurors they won’t have to “let her profit to the tune of millions of dollars” because they will see that it is impossible to believe the “unbelievable.”
“This is an absolutely outrageous case,” he said, claiming that Carroll sued in order to raise her status and for political reasons.
He noted that Carroll had testified that it was an “astonishing coincidence” that a 2012 episode of a “Law & Order” offshoot depicted a woman who is raped in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman.
“What is the likelihood of that?” Tacopina asked. “One in 20 billion? One in 10 billion?”
Tacopina said the allegations were too absurd to call his client as a witness, noting that Carroll expected jurors to believe that Trump would risk everything to attack a woman in a busy department store, even though she couldn’t remember exactly when the alleged assault occurred.
“What could I have asked Donald Trump? Where were you on some unknown date, 27 or 28 years ago?” he said.
In a rebuttal, Mike Ferrara, an attorney for Carroll, mocked Trump’s decision to skip the trial, saying jurors could use his absence to conclude that Trump committed the attack, because he “never looked you in the eye and denied it.”
Kaplan told jurors it wasn’t a “he said, she said” case but rather one in which they should weigh what 11 witnesses, including Carroll, said against what they heard from Trump in his video deposition.
“He didn’t even bother to show up here in person,” Kaplan said, referring to Trump’s absence from the proceedings in federal court in Manhattan. She told jurors that much of what he said in his deposition and in public statements “actually supports our side of the case.”
“In a very real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself,” she said. “He knows what he did. He knows that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll.”
Kaplan recounted the testimony of two women who say they too were attacked sexually by Trump.
Jessica Leeds, 81, said he grabbed her chest and ran his hand up her skirt during a 1979 airline flight. Natasha Stoynoff said Trump forcibly kissed her at his Florida mansion in 2005 as she worked on a story about his marriage for People magazine.
Trump has insisted in public statements and in the deposition that Carroll made up her claims to boost sales of a 2019 memoir. The former president has called Carroll “mentally sick” and a “disgrace.”
Carroll, 79, who is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, testified for more than two days. Kaplan praised her testimony as “credible.”
“It was consistent, and it was powerful,” the lawyer said.
She contrasted that testimony with Trump’s deposition. Kaplan noted that the man who had derided Carroll as not being his “type” was shown a photograph of her from more than three decades ago and twice misidentified her as his second wife, Marla Maples.
“Carroll, a former cheerleader and Miss Indiana, was exactly Mr. Trump’s type,” Kaplan said. “She is smart. She is funny. She is beautiful. And, most of all, she is courageous.”
Carroll said she was leaving Bergdorf Goodman through a revolving door in spring 1996 when Trump was entering and stopped her, asking for help shopping for a gift for a woman.
Carroll said they took escalators to the store’s nearly empty sixth floor, where they teased each other about trying on a piece of see-through lingerie.
She said she entered a dressing room with Trump before the flirting turned violent, with Trump slamming her against a wall, pulling down her tights and raping her. She said she kneed him after an encounter that lasted several minutes and fled the store.
Carroll said she has not had an intimate relationship since, in part because of the encounter.
Trump’s public comments are the basis of Carroll’s defamation claim. Kaplan labeled the comments as lies and said they ruined her client’s reputation and forced an end to her 27-year employment as an Elle magazine columnist.
Kaplan urged jurors to find in favor of “my brave client, E. Jean Carroll,” but put no number on the damages sought.
“Consider the evidence and pick a number you think is right,” she said. “This lawsuit is not about the money. This lawsuit is about getting her name back.”