Trump’s Lawyer Spars With E. Jean Carroll Over Rape Accusation

 

Trump’s Lawyer Spars With E. Jean Carroll Over Rape Accusation

 

Joseph Tacopina asked Ms. Carroll to retell her story in minute detail, probing for inconsistencies. His aggressive questioning irritated the judge.

 

By Benjamin Weiser, Lola Fadulu, Hurubie Meko and Kate Christobek

April 27, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/nyregion/trump-e-jean-carroll-rape-trial.html

 

In a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday, a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump asked E. Jean Carroll, the writer who has accused Mr. Trump of raping her nearly three decades ago, whether she had screamed for help.

 

“I’m not a screamer,” Ms. Carroll responded, adding that she was in a panic during the encounter in a dressing room. “I was fighting,” she said. “You can’t beat up on me for not screaming.”

 

Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said he was not doing that, but Ms. Carroll, her voice rising, said from the witness stand that women often keep silent about an attack because they fear being asked what they could have done to stop it. “They are always asked, ‘Why didn’t you scream?’” Ms. Carroll said.

 

“I’m telling you, he raped me, whether I screamed or not,” she declared.

 

The highly charged exchange came as Ms. Carroll underwent hours of cross-examination by Mr. Tacopina, who made it clear he was seeking to undermine her testimony about what she says was a vicious attack by Mr. Trump after they ran into each other at the Bergdorf Goodman store on Fifth Avenue in the mid-1990s.

 

Mr. Trump is avoiding the trial — he is running to regain the presidency and made a campaign appearance in New Hampshire on Thursday afternoon — and the cross-examination by Mr. Tacopina could be pivotal to his defense.

 

The lawyer pressed Ms. Carroll repeatedly about basic facts, probing for inconsistencies and asking about her inability to remember precisely when in 1995 or 1996 the encounter occurred.

 

“I wish to heaven we could give you a date,” she replied.

 

Mr. Tacopina had suggested in his opening statement on Tuesday that Mr. Trump could not provide an alibi without a date.

 

“It all comes down to, do you believe the unbelievable?” Mr. Tacopina told the jury.

 

During the cross-examination on Thursday, tensions ebbed and flowed. Ms. Carroll’s interactions with Mr. Tacopina were curt but civil, with occasional flashes of irritation and anger.

 

When Mr. Tacopina used the word “supposedly” to describe her accusation at one point, it drew a firm rebuke.

 

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.

 

“Not supposedly. I was raped,” Ms. Carroll said.

 

“That’s your version, right, Ms. Carroll, that you were raped?” Mr. Tacopina responded.

 

“Those are the facts,” she said.

 

At times during the cross-examination, Mr. Tacopina’s approach led to admonishments from the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court. “Come on, Mr. Tacopina,” the judge said at one point, later repeating that the lawyer’s questions were “argumentative.”

 

Another time Judge Kaplan told Mr. Tacopina, “You get to make a closing argument in this case, counselor, and this isn’t the time for it.”

 

Ms. Carroll sued Mr. Trump in November under a new state law in New York that grants adult sexual abuse victims a one-year window to bring lawsuits against people they say abused them. Her lawsuit, filed in federal court because she and Mr. Trump live in different states, asks that a jury find Mr. Trump liable for battery and defamation, and award her monetary damages.

 

The suit also asks that Mr. Trump retract what it says were defamatory statements made in October 2022 on his Truth Social platform, calling her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.”

 

On Thursday, as Mr. Tacopina questioned Ms. Carroll, he tried to show inconsistencies among her accounts in court and deposition testimony, in public statements and in a book and magazine excerpt she published in 2019, where she first made her public accusation of rape against Mr. Trump.

 

Mr. Tacopina asked detailed questions about a purse she had held during the encounter, and how she had used her knee to push Mr. Trump away, as she had described.

 

She stood to demonstrate how she raised her knee.

 

Ms. Carroll had earlier testified that during the attack, Mr. Trump inserted his fingers into her vagina, “which was extremely painful.” Then, she said, he inserted his penis.

 

Mr. Tacopina, during his cross-examination, asked Ms. Carroll what she did after arriving at home that night. She said that she remembers that her “vagina still hurt from his fingers.”

 

Mr. Tacopina also suggested Ms. Carroll had political reasons to accuse Mr. Trump.

 

Responding to his questions, Ms. Carroll confirmed she had voted as a Democrat since the 1990s. Asked if it was accurate to say she was “almost in disbelief” when Mr. Trump announced he was running for president in 2016, she replied, “Not almost in disbelief. I was in disbelief.”

 

When Mr. Tacopina asked why she did not accuse Mr. Trump when he was running for president, Ms. Carroll said her mother was ill. She died one month before the election, and Mr. Tacopina questioned why Ms. Carroll did not then accuse Mr. Trump.

 

“I was in deep, incredible, painful mourning,” Ms. Carroll said.

 

Mr. Tacopina suggested that Ms. Carroll made the rape allegation when she did because she wanted to sell her memoir.

 

“The story came out not because I was writing a book,” Ms. Carroll testified. Rather, she said, she was inspired to speak publicly after a 2017 New York Times report in which several women accused the movie producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual abuse.

 

That, she said, gave her the courage to tell her own story. “Staying silent does not work,” she said.

 

Mr. Tacopina had Ms. Carroll confirm she had not gone to a doctor and had no medical records or photographs documenting physical injuries. She also confirmed she had never gone to the police.

 

The court day began with questions for Ms. Carroll from one of her lawyers, Michael Ferrara, who tried to get ahead of the lines of inquiry that Mr. Trump's legal team ultimately pursued.

 

Ms. Carroll said the lawsuit was “about getting my name back.” She also acknowledged that she liked attention, but “attention for being raped is not …” She paused momentarily. “It’s hard.”

 

She described for the jury how difficult her life has been since going public, including how she felt when Mr. Trump wrote about her allegation on Truth Social.

 

Ms. Carroll, who has said in the past that she was fired by Elle magazine in 2019 after Mr. Trump’s repeated insults against her, testified that she had begun writing on Substack, the newsletter platform.

 

But then Mr. Trump attacked her again on Truth Social in October 2022 with his hoax comments.

 

“I felt happy that I was back on my feet, had garnered some readers and feeling pretty good,” she told the jury, “and then boom, he knocks me back down again.”

 

 

She said his statements led to a flurry of attacks on social media. When asked if she ever regretted coming forward, Ms. Carroll responded: “About five times a day.”

 

Mr. Trump even this week has been assailing Ms. Carroll’s allegations on social media, attacks that prompted Judge Kaplan to warn his lawyer that his client was skirting serious punishment. He told Mr. Tacopina that it would wise to discuss his displeasure with the former president.

 

Campaigning in New Hampshire on Thursday, Mr. Trump brought up various legal entanglements, which include an indictment this month by a New York grand jury on false records charges, a Georgia district attorney’s investigation into his attempts to sway the election in that state and two criminal investigations by a federal special counsel.

 

He avoided specifically mentioning the trial in Manhattan and Ms. Carroll’s accusations.

 

Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.

 

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.