Lawyers for Trump and His Accuser Clash Over Her Motives in Rape Case

 

Lawyers for Trump and His Accuser Clash Over Her Motives in Rape Case

 

E. Jean Carroll says former President Donald J. Trump attacked her in a department store. As the trial began, his lawyer called her lawsuit a plan to make her famous.

 

By Benjamin Weiser, Lola Fadulu and Kate Christobek

April 25, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/nyregion/trump-rape-trial-e-jean-carroll.html

 

A lawyer for the writer E. Jean Carroll told a Manhattan jury on Tuesday that former President Donald J. Trump viciously raped her client one evening nearly 30 years ago in a department store dressing room, an assault that she said Ms. Carroll, filled with fear and shame, long had kept secret.

 

“The whole attack lasted just a few minutes, but it would stay with her forever,” the lawyer, Shawn G. Crowley, said in an opening statement in a trial in Federal District Court. She told the jury that the case is Ms. Carroll’s chance “to clear her name, to pursue justice and to get her life back.”

 

Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, followed with an aggressive attack on Ms. Carroll, contending that her account was untrue and accusing her of exploiting her story for personal gain.

 

“She became a celebrity and loved every minute of it,” Mr. Tacopina said.

 

The lawyers’ unreconcilable characterizations came on the first day of the trial in the lawsuit by Ms. Carroll against Mr. Trump, brought under a new law in New York that allows sexual assault victims to sue the people they say abused them, even if the statute of limitations has long expired.

 

The trial, expected to last one to two weeks, seeks to apply the accountability of the #MeToo era to a dominating political figure. It takes place amid a barrage of legal action aimed at Mr. Trump, who is running to regain the presidency and arguing that lawsuits and investigations that he faces are meant to drag him down.

 

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to New York fraud charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, and faces a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the state’s attorney general. He is the target of a criminal investigation in Georgia over attempted interference in the 2020 election. In addition, a federal special counsel is examining the discovery of sensitive documents at his residence, as well as his role in the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. He has denied wrongdoing in all the cases.

 

In Ms. Carroll’s case, her lawyers will ask the jury to find Mr. Trump liable for battery and defamation, and if he is found responsible, to award monetary damages.

 

Two lawsuits. E. Jean Carroll, a writer who says former President Donald Trump raped her in the mid 1990s, has filed two separate lawsuits against the former president. Here’s what to know:

 

Who is E. Jean Carroll and what does she claim? Carroll is a journalist and a onetime advice columnist for Elle magazine. She wrote about the alleged assault in a 2019 memoir, claiming that Trump had attacked her in the dressing room of a department store. The account was the most serious of several sexual misconduct allegations women have made against Trump, all of which he has denied.

 

How did Trump respond to her claims? After Carroll’s account appeared as an excerpt of her book in New York magazine, Trump emphatically denied her accusations, saying that she was “totally lying,” that the assault had never occurred and that he could not have raped her because she was not his “type.”

 

On what grounds is Carroll suing Trump for rape? In May, New York passed a law giving adult sexual assault victims a one-time opportunity to file civil cases, even if the statute of limitations has long expired. Carroll subsequently filed a lawsuit, accusing Trump of rape and seeking damages. The trial is scheduled to begin on April 25, after the judge denied Trump’s request for a one-month delay.

 

Why did she also sue him for defamation? In 2019, Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in New York for making disparaging comments and branding her a liar after the publication of her memoir. On Oct. 19, the former president was questioned under oath in the case. That suit is currently tied up in an appeal.

 

Ms. Carroll, 79, a former magazine columnist, said nothing publicly about the encounter for decades before publishing a memoir in 2019 that accused Mr. Trump of attacking her.

 

In court on Tuesday, Ms. Crowley took the jury through a meticulous account of how Ms. Carroll’s chance encounter with Mr. Trump at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan began with humor and friendly teasing. She had met him once before and was leaving the store as he was arriving, and he asked her for help picking out a gift for a woman. She agreed, thinking it would make for a funny story, Ms. Crowley said.

 

They made their way up the escalator to the lingerie department on the sixth floor, which was unattended at that hour, Ms. Crowley said, adding that Mr. Trump eventually maneuvered Ms. Carroll into a dressing room and slammed her against a wall. “He pressed his lips against her,” Ms. Crowley said.

 

She said Mr. Trump then pulled down Ms. Carroll’s tights and sexually assaulted her. Ms. Carroll ultimately broke free and fled from the store.

 

Mr. Trump, 76, has denied that he raped Ms. Carroll, accusing her of lying and attacking her repeatedly in public statements and on social media, both while in office and after leaving.

 

In 2019, after she published her account, he called her allegation “totally false” and said he could not have raped her because she was not his “type.” Last October, he said again, in a post on Truth Social, that she was not telling the truth and that the case was a “complete con job.”

 

Ms. Carroll’s defamation claim is based on those October statements.

 

Ms. Crowley called Mr. Trump’s response to the allegations “swift and brutal.”

 

His lawyer, Mr. Tacopina, told the jury on Tuesday that Ms. Carroll was “advancing a false claim of rape for money, for political reasons and for status.”

 

Confronting the antipathy many feel for Mr. Trump, he added, “We all have to be treated the same way, even if you hate Donald Trump.”

 

In offering the jury a preview of Ms. Carroll’s case, Ms. Crowley described Ms. Carroll’s Midwestern upbringing, her dream of becoming a writer and her career as a successful columnist and magazine writer in the early 1990s.

 

Ms. Carroll will tell her story directly to the jury from the witness stand, Ms. Crowley said, and the jury will also hear from two friends in whom Ms. Carroll confided shortly after the events.

 

Anticipating a defense argument, Ms. Crowley said that it might be difficult to understand why her client would wait so long to reveal a sexual assault.

 

But she reminded the jurors that the events took place nearly three decades ago, in a different world for single women, long before the #MeToo movement. She said the jury would hear from an expert witness who would testify that rape victims sometimes waited years or even decades to reveal what happened to them, or may never come forward at all.

 

Mr. Tacopina walked the jury through Ms. Carroll’s sexual assault allegation during his opening statement, casting doubt on nearly every detail.

 

Mr. Tacopina said certain elements of Ms. Carroll’s story were hard to fathom, such as that a “posh and upscale” luxury department store was nearly empty or that a sales attendant didn’t offer to help Mr. Trump, who was famous in New York at that time.

 

“It all comes down to do you believe the unbelievable?” he asked the jury.

 

As the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, took the bench on Tuesday morning, Ms. Carroll was seated alongside her lawyers; Mr. Trump was not present at the table where his lawyers sat.

 

Judge Kaplan told the parties to advise their clients and witnesses to “please refrain from making any statements that are likely to incite violence or civil unrest.”

 

“Both parties are well aware of the publicity this case has attracted,” the judge said. He said he was not suggesting either party or their attorneys had “engaged in any misconduct with respect to this trial.” But he made it clear that he was especially focused on the “safety and privacy” of the jurors in the case.

 

The nine jurors selected for the trial come from Manhattan, Westchester County and the Bronx and work in a variety of industries and jobs. One works for the New York Public Library, another for a hospital and a third as a building janitor.

 

The jurors will remain anonymous throughout the trial, a decision the judge made in a ruling last month, saying it was “all for your protection.”

 

“The fewer people who know who you are, the better,” Judge Kaplan told them on Tuesday.

 

After opening statements concluded late Tuesday, Judge Kaplan released the jury, with testimony expected to begin Wednesday.

 

He then turned to Mr. Tacopina and asked if he was correct in assuming that Mr. Trump would not be testifying, as Mr. Tacopina had said the defense intended to play portions of the former president’s video deposition.

 

Mr. Tacopina responded, “I am not sure, your honor.”

 

The judge said he had to have an answer this week, adding that the uncertainty was an imposition on court security and staff.

 

Benjamin Weiser is a reporter covering the Manhattan federal courts. He has long covered criminal justice, both as a beat and investigative reporter. Before joining The Times in 1997, he worked at The Washington Post. @BenWeiserNYT

 

Lola Fadulu is a general assignment reporter on the Metro desk.