E. Jean Carroll testifies that Trump ‘raped me’ and ‘trashed my reputation’ – UPI.com – Thelocalreport.in

E. Jean Carroll arrives at Federal District Court for a hearing in New York on October 21, 2020. Carroll detailed her encounter with Donald Trump in the 1990s in her testimony Wednesday. File photo by Justin Lane/EPA-EFE

“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Carroll said. “He lied and ruined my reputation, and I’m here to get my life back.”

Carroll said he initially described the meeting with Trump as “high comedy.”

“He was very talkative on the escalator and said he was thinking of buying Bergdorf,” Carroll said of the meeting in which the two recognized each other from a brief previous encounter at a party. “I was thinking, ‘I have a great story,’ and she was thrilled to go lingerie” with him.

Carroll said Trump was initially “nice and a lot of fun” and was stunned when he attacked her in a dressing room after she said they both suggested the other try on lingerie. She called her decision to go into the locker room with Trump “very stupid.”

“He put his shoulder against me and held me against the wall,” she said in her testimony when Trump allegedly raped her. “I couldn’t see anything happening, but I could certainly feel that pain.”

Carroll said a friend she told, Lisa Birnbach, told her to tell the police, but another, Carol Martin, dissuaded her because Trump was powerful and had a team of lawyers to defend him.

“I was embarrassed, I thought it was my fault,” Carroll told the court.

Carroll said she had not had sex or formed a relationship since the encounter.

Carroll filed the lawsuit in November, alleging that Trump smeared her in a 2022 Truth Social post when he called her accusations “misleading and lying.” She added the assault charge after New York passed the Adult Survivors Act, which allows victims to bring civil lawsuits beyond the criminal statute of limitations.

Carroll’s rape allegations were first published in NewYork magazine in June 2019 while Trump was president, with an excerpt from his book WWhat do we need men for? A modest proposal.

Trump has denied knowing Carroll and claimed he doesn’t know who she is. Her attorneys told jurors Tuesday that Carroll’s “story is not true,” saying she could present no evidence or details, including the date the alleged rape of hers occurred.

It was not immediately clear if Trump would testify, but he took to his social media platform Truth Social Wednesday to condemn the case as a “made up SCAM” and a “false and fraudulent story,” prompting Judge Lewis Kaplan to tell his legal team the following. the statements seemed “totally inappropriate”.

“Your client is basically trying to talk to his ‘public,’ but more problematic, to the jury in this case about things that aren’t being talked about,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan said Trump’s comments and subsequent posts by his son Eric could amount to contempt of court.

The judge also suggested more severe “remedies” might be necessary and urged Trump’s lawyers to have “a discussion with the client” before the trial resumed on Thursday.