The civil defamation and battery trial of former President Donald Trump resumes Tuesday with testimony expected from two women that accuser E. Jean Carroll hopes will bolster her case.
Carroll, who brought the lawsuit in November, alleges that Trump defamed her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!” when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s.
She added a charge of battery under a recently adopted New York law that allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations. Trump has denied all allegations that he raped Carroll or defamed her.
Lisa Birnbach, a writer, was the first person Carroll said she told of the alleged assault after it occurred.
In earlier testimony, Carroll described being in something of a stupor when she called Birnbach after leaving the department store, laughing as she relayed her alleged encounter with Trump. It was Birnbach, Carroll said, who told her to stop laughing because she had been raped.
“And even when Lisa said it, it took a real effort for me to take it in,” Carroll testified. “Lisa is the one who focused my brain for that moment. It was Lisa saying that.”
Carroll’s attorneys are also expected to call Jessica Leeds, a businesswoman who alleges that Trump groped her on an airplane in 1979. Leeds first told her story to The New York Times just before the 2016 election. She is one of two women whom the court ruled are allowed to testify about prior alleged assaults by Trump, as Carroll’s attorneys try to show a pattern of alleged behavior that Trump has long denied.
Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll departs Manhattan federal court, May 1, 2023, in New York.
John Minchillo/AP
“The evidence will show that Donald Trump assaulted Jessica Leeds on an airplane in 1979,” Carroll’s attorney, Shawn Crowley, told the jury last week during opening statements. “She was seated next to him in the first class cabin. After they made small talk and finished their meals, Trump lunged at her, he pressed his body against her, tried to kiss her, grabbed her breasts, and started to put his hand up her skirt, exactly as he did to Ms. Carroll.”
Trump has denied the allegations.
“Like Ms. Carroll, for a very long time, she didn’t tell a soul what happened,” Crowley said of Leeds. “She didn’t want to risk losing her job or being humiliated for coming forward. But in 2016, Ms. Leeds watched the presidential debate and she heard Donald Trump say that he had never kissed a woman without her consent. She knew she couldn’t stay silent any longer.”
“After Ms. Leeds spoke publicly, Trump attacked her. He called her a liar. He told the world that she was not his type. Sound familiar?” Crowley said.
On Monday, under cross examination by defense attorney Joe Tacopina, Carroll said she didn’t contact police after she was allegedly attacked by Trump because, as a woman born in the 1940s, she’s a member of the “silent generation” that didn’t speak up about such things. The exchange came after Tacopina introduced several of her advice columns for Elle magazine in which she suggested that her readers call police in the event of a sexual assault or threat.
“There were numerous times where you’ve advised your readers to call the police” despite Carroll never reporting her own alleged rape to police, Tacopina said to Carroll.
“In most cases I advised my readers to go to the police,” Carroll replied.
“I was born in 1943,” she said. “I am a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and not complain. The fact that I never went to the police is not surprising for someone my age. I would rather have done anything than call the police.”
The answer was stricken from the record as nonresponsive to the question posed, but the exchange continued the defense’s questioning of Carroll’s actions following the alleged assault, and their suggestions that her behavior — not going to the police, not seeking security camera footage, continuing to shop at Bergdorf’s — is at odds with how other sex assault victims might behave.
The nine-member jury of six men and three women is weighing Carroll’s defamation and battery claims and deciding potential monetary damages.
Carroll’s lawsuit is her second against Trump related to her rape allegation.
She previously sued Trump in 2019 after the then-president denied her rape claim by telling The Hill that Carroll was “totally lying,” saying, “I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” That defamation suit has been caught in a procedural back-and-forth over the question of whether Trump, as president, was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government when he made those remarks.
If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in that suit — which means that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.
This month’s trial is taking place as Trump seeks the White House for a third time, while facing numerous legal challenges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, his handling of classified material after leaving the White House, and possible attempts to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 vote. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said last week she would decide whether to file criminal charges against Trump or his allies this summer.