NEW YORK — Donald Trump slammed a woman against a wall in a Midtown department store in the mid-1990s, raped her, and then sought to “destroy and humiliate” her when she came forward, a Manhattan jury heard in opening arguments Tuesday in writer E. Jean Carroll’s bombshell civil rape case against the former president.
Standing before a jury in Manhattan Federal Court, plaintiff lawyer Shawn Crowley described Carroll’s encounter with Trump in the spring of 1996, which began as Carroll was walking out of Bergdorf Goodman in Midtown Manhattan.
“They started chatting. Trump asked Ms. Carroll to help him pick out a gift for a woman. She agreed, thinking it would make for a funny story,” Crowley said.
After making their way up to the empty sixth floor to the lingerie department on the escalators, Trump walked over to the counter, picked up a lace bodysuit, and tossed it to Carroll. Crowley said they joked about trying it on.
“Still laughing, they moved to the dressing room, with Carroll thinking, he might actually try on this lingerie,” Crowley said.
“The moment they went inside, everything changed. Suddenly, nothing was funny. Donald Trump slammed Ms. Carroll against the wall. He pressed his lips against hers. She struggled to break free but couldn’t. Trump was almost twice her size. He held down her arm, pulled down her tights and then he sexually assaulted her,” Crowley said.
“He was a big man — had easily 100 pounds on her. And he was determined,” Crowley later said, describing the sexual assault and rape in graphic detail.
Crowley said Carroll, who plans to testify at the trial, escaped after a few minutes and fled the store onto Fifth Avenue.
Crowley said Trump slandered Carroll when she came forward decades later when he was positioned as the most powerful person in the world, branding “her as a liar and a fraud.”
“Donald Trump’s response was explosive,” Crowley said, describing how “he went on the attack seeking to destroy and humiliate” her.
“The evidence will show that when President Trump called E. Jean Carroll a liar, people listened, and her hard-earned reputation as a journalist and a writer took a serious hit,” Crowley said. “He even said, ‘Ms. Carroll must be lying, because,’ — I’m quoting here — ‘she’s not my type.’ … He was saying she was too ugly to assault.”
After Trump left the White House, Carroll’s lawyer said, Trump “saw fit to drag her name through the mud again.”
Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina blasted Carroll in his opening argument, calling her a liar and accusing her and the friends she told about the alleged assault of scheming to politically hurt Trump.
Tacopina said Carroll had the “absolute time of her life” after going public with her allegations, which he said she fabricated to sell a book.
“Him calling her a liar was the truth,” Tacopina said. “He never raped her and he never defamed her.”
The bombastic defense attorney, who’s also representing Trump in his criminal case, said Carroll and her friends “hated Donald Trump, loathed” him.
“So who would make up a story like this and who would go along with it?” Tacopina says. “People with a political bent. People with a financial motive. And people who desire to be in the spotlight. That’s who would make up a sick story like this.”
Tacopina told jurors that regardless of how much apathy they feel for the former president, those feelings should stay outside the courtroom.
“People have very strong feelings about Donald Trump, one way or the other,” Tacopina said. “It’s okay to feel however you feel. You can hate Donald Trump. It’s OK. But there’s a time and a secret place for that, for you to express those feelings. It’s called a ballot box.”
The opening statements came hours after a panel of six men and three women were selected to serve as jurors. Carroll arrived at the courthouse just before 9 a.m. Trump did not turn up for the first day of his case. Tacopina told the judge he didn’t know if Trump would be present for any of the trial.
Before openings, Manhattan Federal Court Judge Lewis Kaplan told jurors their identities would remain anonymous. He advised them not to tell each other their real names. They will be escorted to and from the courthouse by U.S. Marshals while the case plays out.
Kaplan advised the panelists not to tell their friends or family what case they’re judging if they are selected. In ruling the jury would be anonymous, the judge previously cited statements Trump has made attacking officials involved in his various legal cases and their potential to incite violence and civil unrest.
“The goal is to protect you in every way,” Kaplan said.
Judge Kaplan told the jurors they would be tasked with determining what did or didn’t happen at the department store, whether Carroll was raped or sexually assaulted, and whether and to what extent she should be compensated.
The case is one in a litany of legal challenges facing Trump as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination. He has been hit with 34 felony charges related to the infamous hush money payment to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. And he is being sued by the New York attorney general for rampant business fraud.
He is also being criminally investigated in Georgia for trying to subvert the 2020 election and by special counsel Jack Smith for taking classified documents from the White House.
Carroll, 79, a former advice columnist for the magazine Elle, has waited five years to make her case to a jury.
Her initial 2019 suit against Trump is still tied up with appeals. The case now on trial was filed in November as the first brought under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, historic legislation that lifted the statute of limitations to bring sexual assault claims for one year.
Carroll has said she was never intimate with a man again after the disturbing encounter with Trump, which she kept quiet about for decades out of fear he would ruin her reputation. Friends she told in the aftermath are slated to testify, as are two women who have accused Trump of sexual assault.
“One told her to call the police. The other told her not to say a word. She warned Ms. Carroll that Trump would ruin her life,” Crowley said. “Filled with fear and shame, she kept silent for decades.”
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