NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 25: Magazine Columnist E. Jean Carroll leaves after the first day of her civil trial against former President Donald Trump at Manhattan Federal Court on April 25, 2023 in New York City. Jury selections begin in the Carroll civil trial against the former president, which she alleges attacked and sexually assaulted her in a dressing room of a luxury department store in the 1990s. The lawsuit comes after the passage of the Adult Survivors Act, a 2022 New York law that gave a one-year window beginning in November of that year for people to sue their alleged assailants even if the statute of limitations had expired, which had happened in Carroll’s case. The former president has stated that this never happened and has denied meeting her. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
On Wednesday, author E. Jean Carroll took the stand in her defamation and battery lawsuit against former President Donald Trump. Carroll’s raw testimony detailed allegations that Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman.
Carroll cried multiple times as she described her alleged encounter with Trump.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me,” Carroll told the jury.
Carroll wrote a book detailing her allegations against Trump. “When I wrote about it. He said it didn’t happen,” she said. “He lied and shattered my reputation. And I’m here to try to get my life back.”
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Carroll’s testimony leaned on vivid details of her alleged encounter with Trump. Carroll said that she did not remember the exact date of the event but remembered it to be in late 1995 or early 1996.
Trump’s lawyers will cross-examine Carroll’s testimony. It is unknown when Trump’s legal team will be able to ask her questions.
Carroll filed a civil lawsuit against Trump in 2022 after New York State passed the Adult Survivors Act. The legislation took down the statute of limitations for sexual assault victims to file civil lawsuits against alleged perpetrators.
Trump has repeatedly denied that the interaction happened – even claiming that the two had never met. But photos of the two together quickly disproved that claim.
“I don’t know this woman, have no idea who she is, other than it seems she got a picture of me many years ago, with her husband, shaking my hand on a reception line at a celebrity charity event,” Trump said on Truth Social. “She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her … Now all I have to do is go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phony attacks on me. This can only happen to ‘Trump’!”
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