Trump lawyer grills accuser
Asks why she didn’t scream
NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s lawyer sought Thursday to pick apart a decades-old rape claim against the former president, questioning why accuser E. Jean Carroll did not scream or seek help when Trump allegedly attacked her in a department store.
But Carroll, a writer and magazine columnist, rebuffed Joseph Tacopina’s suggestion that rape victims are supposed to act a certain way, saying such thinking deters women from coming forward.
“I’m telling you, he raped me whether I screamed or not,” Carroll said, her voice rising and breaking, at the New York civil trial.
Carroll, who is suing Trump over the alleged assault, claims he raped her in a dressing room at the posh Manhattan store in the 1990s. She did not go to police and said she only told two close friends at the time.
Tacopina suggested her claims strained credulity, contending that she only came forward in 2019 — midway through Trump’s presidency — because of her disdain for his politics and because she wanted to sell copies of her book.
Trump has repeatedly claimed the encounter never happened, that he doesn’t know Carroll, and that she’s not his “type” — comments that are at the heart of the defamation claims in Carroll’s lawsuit. The complaint seeks unspecified damages and a retraction of the comments.
Trump, who held a campaign event Thursday in Manchester, N.H., is not expected to appear at the trial. Jurors are expected to see parts of a videotaped deposition he gave in the case.
On Wednesday, Trump launched a counterattack against the trial on social media, telling followers on his Truth Social platform that the case was “a made up SCAM.”
The outburst drew a rebuke and a warning from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who called it “entirely inappropriate.”
Otherwise consistent and unruffled in her second day of testimony, Carroll grew frustrated as Tacopina zeroed in on how she says she behaved during the assault, which she alleges sprung from a chance run-in with Trump at luxury retailer Bergdorf Goodman in spring 1996.
“You can’t beat up on me because I didn’t scream,” an agitated Carroll told Tacopina.
Tacopina also ticked off the judge, who said of his incredulous questions: “It’s argumentative, it’s repetitive, and it’s inappropriate.”