The advice columnist E Jean Carroll told jurors in Manhattan on Thursday she came to court “because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen”.
Carroll, 79, said social media users lobbed new attacks against her as people called her a “liar, slut, ugly, old”.
“But I couldn’t be more proud to be here,” she said.
Speaking a day after her first, searing testimony regarding her accusation of rape against the former president, the former Elle magazine columnist was expected to face a tough cross-examination from Trump’s lawyers.
Carroll is seeking damages in her civil lawsuit for battery after Trump allegedly sexually assaulted her in a New York department store changing room in the 1990s.
She is also suing the former president for defamation after he accused her of lying about the alleged attack when she went public with her accusations in a book.
Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, told the jury in his opening statement he would show Carroll conspired with two other women to falsely accuse the former president because they “hate” him for winning the 2016 presidential election.
Tacopina said Carroll filed the lawsuit for political ends, to sell a book and for public attention.
“They schemed to hurt Donald Trump politically,” he said.
In her testimony on Wednesday, Carroll sought to head off the accusation.
“I’m not settling a political score. I’m settling a personal score,” she said.
Carroll gave a detailed and at times tearful account of the alleged attack by the then businessman in a changing room at Bergdorf Goodman.
“He immediately shut the door and shoved me up against the wall,” she said. “He shoved me so hard my head banged. I was extremely confused. I pushed back and he thrust me back against the wall again, banging my head again.”
Carroll said Trump pulled down her tights, then raped her. She described going into the dressing room with Trump as “very stupid”.
“It left me unable to ever have a romantic life again,” she said.
Later, Carroll shed tears as she explained that she found it impossible to even smile at a man she was attracted to after the alleged rape, since which she had not had sex.
Lawyers for Carroll have said they do not intend to call Trump. His own attorneys have said they could yet call him to the witness stand.
Trump has repeatedly claimed the encounter never happened, that he does not know Carroll and that she is not his “type”. He launched a counter-attack on Wednesday, telling followers on his Truth Social platform that the case was “a made-up scam” and that her lawyer was a political operative.
The outburst drew a rebuke and a warning from the judge, Lewis A Kaplan, who called it “entirely inappropriate”.
“What seems to be the case is that your client is basically endeavoring certainly to speak to his ‘public’, but, more troublesome, to the jury in this case about stuff that has no business being spoken about,” the judge said.
After Tacopina promised to speak to Trump and ask him not to make further posts, Kaplan warned: “We are getting into an area, conceivably, in which your client may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability.”
Later in the day, Kaplan warned Tacopina again to speak with Trump after the ex-president’s son Eric tweeted criticism of funding Carroll’s lawyer received from a wealthy Democratic contributor.
On Thursday, Trump was due to visit New Hampshire for his first campaign appearance since Joe Biden launched his own re-election bid, setting up a potential rematch of the 2020 election.
Trump’s appearance in downtown Manchester was set to be his first visit to an early-voting state since, earlier this month, he pleaded not guilty in New York to a 34-count felony indictment charging him in a scheme to bury allegations of extramarital affairs.
Trump was expected to use the event at a Manchester hotel to highlight new endorsements and speak about the economy, the opioid epidemic and other subjects.
Associated Press contributed reporting
