Women to testify they can corroborate E Jean Carroll’s rape allegation against Trump
Jurors in E Jean Carroll’s legal action against Donald Trump for alleged rape and defamation are expected to begin hearing on Tuesday from two women who say they can back key parts of the advice columnist’s account.
Carroll wrapped up three days on the witness stand on Monday as the judge in the civil case, Lewis Kaplan, denied a defense motion for a mistrial on the grounds that he had made “pervasive unfair and prejudicial rulings” against Trump’s team during its crossexamination of the former president’s accuser.
Carroll is suing Trump for battery for allegedly raping her in a New York department store changing room in 1996, and for defamation for calling her a liar after she went public about the alleged assault in 2019.
Carroll’s legal team is expected to call two women, Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin, to testify that the advice columnist told them about the alleged assault shortly after it occurred. Both have since corroborated the account.
Carroll told the jury that she called Birnbach shortly after she fled the Bergdorf Goodman department store. She said that Birnbach told her the alleged attack was rape and to call the police. Carroll said that she later spoke to Martin, who advised her to keep quiet because Trump was a powerful businessman who would “bury” her.
During cross-examination, Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, pressed Carroll repeatedly about why she did not call the police, and suggested it was evidence she fabricated the accusation against the former president.
On Monday, Carroll defended her decision as the typical response of women of her generation who are “ashamed” to have been sexually assaulted.
“I was born in 1943. I’m a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and to not complain,” she said. “I would never call the police about something I am ashamed of.”
Asked why, then, more than two decades after the alleged rape she decided to go public, Carroll said that times had changed.
“I reached a point in my life at 76 where I was no longer going to stay silent,” she said.
Birnbach and Martin are expected to verify that Carroll told them about the alleged assault at the time.
Carroll’s legal team is also expected to call two other women. Natasha Stoynoff, a writer for People magazine, is expected to testify that in 2005 Trump led her into an empty room and forcibly kissed her until he was interrupted. Jessica Leeds accuses Trump of assaulting her on a plane in 1979 by grabbing her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt.
During two days of cross-examination, Tacopina attempted to discredit Carroll’s account of the alleged assault without much success.
The lawyer pressed her about a conversation with George Conway, the husband of a top White House aide to the then president, Kellyanne Conway. George Conway was a vocal critic of Trump to the embarrassment of his wife.
Carroll said that they spoke at a party where Conway, a lawyer, encouraged her to sue Trump after he called her a liar when she went public with her accusations against him in 2019. Two days later, Carroll filed her first lawsuit for defamation.
Tacopina sought to characterise the lawsuit as politically motivated, in part through the association with Conway, who went on to recommend a lawyer to Carroll.
As Carroll completed her testimony, she was also forced to deny that she had based her accusation on a 2012 episode of the television programme Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which involves a character talking about bursting into a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room as a woman tries on lingerie and raping her.
In her lawsuit, Carroll accuses Trump of guiding her to a dressing room to try on a piece of lingerie, shutting the door and sexually assaulting her.
Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, commented that the television programme appeared to be an “amazing coincidence”.
“Yes, it’s astonishing,” said Carroll. Later, Carroll’s lawyer, Michael Ferrara, asked her: “Are you making up your allegation based on a popular TV show?”
“No, no,” she responded.