by Donald Trump furiously tried to question E Jean Carroll’s rape allegations against him as he spoke out for the first time since the civil defamation trial began.
The former president went to Truth Social Wednesday morning before the first day of testimony in the bombshell case opposing Ms. Carroll, who accused Trump of raping her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s.
In a couple of posts, he branded the case a “witch hunt” as he unleashed a series of shameful assumptions for victims about his allegations.
“The E. Jean Carroll case, Mrs. Bergdorf Goodman, is a fabricated scam,” Trump wrote. “Her attorney is a political operative, funded by a major political donor who they said didn’t exist, only to be caught lying about it.”
“Just look at his CNN interview before and after the commercial break – Like a different person. She said there was a dress, using old Monica Lewinsky “stuff,” so she didn’t want to produce it. The dress should be allowed to be part of the case. This is a fraudulent and false story – the witch hunt!
In the second post, Trump went on to say Ms. Carroll and her lawyers “were caught lying! The Miss Bergdorf Goodman case is being funded by a major political donor who they have been trying to hide.”
“Does anyone think I would take an almost 60-year-old woman I didn’t know, from the front door of a very busy department store, (with me being very well known, to put it mildly!), into a tiny dressing room, and….her” , he wrote. “Didn’t he scream? No witnesses? No one saw this? Never filed a police report? If I was seen there with a woman-BIG PRESS. SCAM!”
Trump’s Truth Social posts were quickly taken to court.
Second to Adam Klasfeld of law and crime, Ms. Carroll’s attorney argued that Mr. Trump’s posts violated two court orders, those directing participants not to discuss lawyers or the DNA sample issue.
Mr. Trump’s initial post misleadingly suggests that Ms. Carroll’s lawyers did not want to include the dress she wore on the day of the alleged rape as evidence.
In reality, Ms. Carroll’s legal team has been trying for three years to obtain Mr. Trump’s DNA sample to compare it to the stains on the dress.
After declining to provide a sample, Trump’s lawyers made an offer to do so earlier this year, but only after the deadline to contest the evidence concerns passed. Judge Lewis Kaplan declined the offer because reopening the DNA issue would delay the trial.
Judge Kaplan addressed the matter Wednesday when discussing the Social Truth posts, asking Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, “For three years [Mr Trump] he refused to provide a DNA sample and now he wants it just in case?”
The judge then called Trump’s comments on Truth Social “wholly inappropriate.”
Mr. Tacopina replied that he would “attempt to address this matter with my client” and that he would ask Mr. Trump to “refrain from any further posts regarding this case.”
The judge replied, “Well, I hope you’re more successful,” and added that Mr. Trump “may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability. And I think you know what I mean.”
The civil lawsuit stems from Ms. Carroll alleging that Mr. Trump raped her in a locker room nearly 30 years ago.
He placed the incident in late 1995 or early 1996, when the future president was married to Marla Maples.
Ms. Carroll, then a magazine writer and television host, bumped into Mr. Trump at the upscale New York department store Bergdorf Goodman.
As Ms. Carroll wrote in her 2019 memoir What do we need men for?, he recognized her as “that advice lady”. She knew him as “that real estate mogul.”
Mr. Trump allegedly told her he was there to buy a gift for “a girl” and asked for help choosing an appropriate item.
The pair made their way to the lingerie section, where Mr. Trump suggested she try a lace bodysuit.
He claims he jokingly said he should have tried it instead.
As they reached the dressing rooms, Ms Carroll claims Mr Trump pushed her against a wall, put his hands under her dress and pulled down her pantyhose.
Then he unzipped his pants and “forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway – or fully, I’m not sure – into me,” she wrote.
A “colossal fight” ensued, he said, and Mrs Carroll finally pushed him away and ran out of the dressing room. The episode was over in under three minutes, she wrote.
After the allegations were first made in a book excerpt in New York magazine in June 2019, Mr. Trump angrily denied it.
“I have never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book, which should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section,” she said in an official White House statement that month.
Then days later in an interview in the Oval Office with The hillTrump has gone even further.
“I’ll say it with great respect: number one, he’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, okay?”
Ms. Carroll then filed a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump claiming he had damaged her reputation, substantially damaged her professionalism, and caused emotional pain.
Months later, the Justice Department stepped in and moved the case to federal court, arguing that he was immune from prosecution as president at the time of the initial libel.
But the federal court disagreed with the DoJ’s position and allowed discovery of the case to continue.
And when the former president failed to get the case dismissed last October, he turned to Truth Social to re-fire his denial, while at the same time unknowingly allowing Ms. Carroll to file the new defamation suit.
In 2022, New York passed the Adult Survivors Act which gave adult survivors of sexual assault one year to sue their alleged abusers.
Ms. Carroll filed a second lawsuit against Mr. Trump alleging rape and additional alleged defamatory statements he made in October 2022 in which she called her a “complete con artist”. This is the second case for which the judicial proceeding began on 25 April.
