Trump calls accuser a ‘nut job’ in tape played for jury
Reputational damage could near $3m: expert
NEW YORK — Jurors watching Donald Trump’s video deposition Thursday heard the former president deride a woman accusing him of rape as a “nut job” and “mentally sick,” and an expert estimated that Trump could have caused nearly $3 million in damage to the accuser’s reputation.
A transcript of Trump's testimony about E. Jean Carroll emerged in court filings before the trial, but the deposition played in court allowed jurors to hear him speak about the case in his own voice. Other parts of the recording were shown in court Wednesday.
The video shown Thursday also included Trump standing by his prior comments that Carroll was not his "type" and defending as "locker room talk" his notorious boasts in a 2005 "Access Hollywood" recording about grabbing women's genitals.
Later, Northwestern University sociologist Ashlee Humphreys testified that a statement Trump made in October 2022 reiterating prior denials had caused between $368,000 and $2.76 million in harm to Carroll’s reputation.
Trump's statement, posted on his Truth Social platform just days before he sat for the deposition, was seen by an estimated 13.8 million to 18 million people, Humphreys testified. She cited social science modeling she performed on behalf of Carroll's lawyers.
Trump's earlier denials caused even more reputational harm, Humphreys said, as when Trump claimed that he had never met Carroll and when he said she was “totally lying” just after she went public in June 2019.
Those estimates could be a factor if the jury finds that Trump defamed Carroll and must weigh monetary damages.
Carroll, a 79-year-old writer and former magazine advice columnist, alleges that Trump raped her in an upscale New York department store dressing room on an unspecified date in spring 1996.
According to Carroll, they ran into each other, got into lighthearted banter about trying on lingerie, and went jokingly into the fitting room, where he slammed the door and suddenly became violent.
Not until 2019 did she make the accusations public and take legal action, but two of her friends have testified that she described the attack to them shortly after Carroll said it occurred.
“I believed it then, and I believe it today,” one of those friends, former television news anchor Carol Martin, said Thursday on the witness stand.
Trump, 76, says that Carroll fabricated the entire encounter and that he has never met her, except for a brief exchange of pleasantries at a 1987 social event.
“I think she's sick, mentally sick,” Trump said calmly during the deposition. He added: “She said that I did something to her that never took place. There was no anything. I know nothing about this nut job.”
Trump has not attended the trial, and his lawyers have said he will not testify or call any witnesses on his behalf.
However, during remarks Thursday to reporters while on a golf trip to Ireland, Trump suggested he would “probably attend” the trial, which is expected to wrap up next week.
His lawyers continued to say there were no plans for him to do so.
Trump, who irked trial Judge Lewis Kaplan with social media posts criticizing the case at the trial’s outset, also repeated his claim that it’s a political “scam” and knocked Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, as an “extremely hostile” and “rough judge” who “doesn’t like me very much.”
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.