Donald Trump appears at a rally. E. Jean Carroll enters federal court in Manhattan for the first day of trial against him. (Photos l-r: Emily Elconin/Getty Images; AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
On the first day of a landmark trial accusing him of rape, author E. Jean Carroll’s attorney emphasized to a nine-person jury that they won’t need to take her word that former President Donald Trump is a rapist.
“This is not a ‘he said, she said’ case,” said Carroll’s lawyer Shawn Crowley.
In 2019, Carroll first stepped forward with her allegations against Trump in a book excerpt published in New York Magazine. Carroll has long claimed that Trump sexually assaulted her inside the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s.
During Crowley’s opening statement, she laid out the allegations in graphic detail, telling jurors that Trump “jammed” his hand up Carroll’s dress, pulled down her tights, and forced his penis inside her. Carroll then stayed silent for decades — at least publicly.
Unknown to the public at the time, Carroll told two of her friends: author Lisa Birnbach and local TV anchor Carol Martin, Crowley said.
One of the anticipated witnesses, Martin is expected to testify that she warned against stepping forward against Trump, who was then a real estate tycoon.
“In her view, Mr. Trump was way too powerful,” Crowley said, adding that Martin believed that Trump had “hundreds of lawyers” who would “bury” Carroll if she came forward.
Two other women, businesswoman Jessica Leeds and journalist Natasha Stoynoff, will testify that Trump cornered them, too. Leeds accused Trump of having groped her on an airplane in 1979.
Stoynoff claims that Trump cornered and forcibly kissed her some 25 years later, when she was on assignment to interview him and Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago for People magazine.
Once Carroll joined their ranks among Trump’s accusers, Trump vehemently denied the allegations and went on a counterattack.
From Trump’s White House perch, Crowley said: “He went on the attack, seeking to destroy and humiliate her.”
In the remark that sparked a defamation lawsuit, Trump said of Carroll: “She’s not my type.”
“‘Not my type.’ We all know what that means: He was saying she was too ugly to assault,” Crowley noted.
Crowley argued that some of Trump’s statements since that time showed otherwise.
Trump first claimed that he never met her, but he was shown a black-and-white photograph of the two of them together at a deposition.
Then, Crowley said, Trump mixed up Carroll with his ex-wife Marla Maples, for whom he left Ivana Trump, the mother of three of his children.
This photograph of Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll at a party was embedded in her complaint.
“This will show you that Ms. Carroll was exactly his type,” Crowley told jurors.
Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina, who is also defending the former president in his criminal case, defended his client’s rhetoric. She noted that Carroll had accused him of being a rapist.
“Of course he exploded!” Tacopina exclaimed. “Of course he attacked her!”
During jury selection, none of the potential candidates said that they would consider the decades-long delay between the alleged sexual assault and her stepping forward a blot on her credibility.
Carroll’s legal team intends to call the author’s sister, Cande Carroll, who will testify that this silence was not unusual to the siblings who grew up in the shadow of World War II, the “grin and bear it” generation.
Tacopina’s opening statement focused on deriding her account and the length of time she took to share it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Carroll brought this case, and the burden remains on her to prove it,” he said.
Whereas Carroll’s witness list has 11 names, Trump’s has only two. His name is one of those names, and it’s unclear whether he will testify. Tacopina prepared jurors for a defense that will focus mainly on attempting to undermine the credibility of Carroll and her witnesses.
“That’s our entire defense — that and some sworn testimony from Donald Trump that you’re going to see,” he said.
Despite that comment, Tacopina later clarified that he was referring to his client’s “video deposition.”
After the jury went home for the day, Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan pressed Tacopina on whether he foreclosed the possibility of Trump’s live testimony.
“The answer is: I’m not sure, your honor,” Tacopina replied.
The judge responded that Tacopina will have to answer that question before the end of the week.
“Fish or cut bait,” Kaplan said.
During jury selection, the candidates came from various walks of life, and they said that they got their news from both conservative and liberal-leaning media outlets. But across the spectrum, they appeared to agree on some things. None of the jurors said that they believed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and none of them used his platform Truth Social.
Each time he asked these questions, Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan noted that he heard “no affirmative response.”
Witness testimony is expected to begin on Wednesday morning.
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