Former President Donald Trump’s lawyer went on the attack Thursday against writer E. Jean Carroll's claims that she was raped by Trump in the 1990s, using cross examination to try to discredit the longtime advice columnist before a jury at a New York civil trial.
Attorney Joe Tacopina began his questioning in Manhattan federal court by citing Carroll's own words as he asked her to acknowledge that she has described her account as odd.
“Certain parts of this story are difficult to conceive of,” she said.
Tacopina used the word “supposedly” in reference to her rape claim, drawing an immediate and stern correction from the writer.
“Not supposedly. I was raped,” she said.
A day earlier, she began her testimony, telling how a chance encounter with Trump at a Bergdorf Goodman store in spring 1996 turned from flirtatious frivolity in the desolate lingerie section into a violent sexual attack in a dressing room. Carroll said Trump slammed her against a wall, yanked down her tights and raped her before she kneed him and fled.
Trump, 76, is not expected to appear at the trial. He has repeatedly claimed the encounter never happened, that he doesn’t know Carroll and that she’s not his “type.”
Carroll, 79, said Wednesday that she sued Trump “because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen.”
Her lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and a retraction of Trump’s allegedly defamatory comments. She never pursued criminal charges.
Thursday's court session began late after lawyers huddled with the judge in chambers, discussing legal issues that were not immediately revealed.
On Wednesday, Trump launched a counterattack against the trial on social media, telling followers on his Truth Social platform that the case was “a made up SCAM” and that her lawyer is a political operative.
The outburst drew a rebuke and a warning from 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 observed.
After Tacopina, promised to speak with 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.
The trial results from a lawsuit Carroll filed in November after the state of New York enacted a law allowing adult victims of sexual assault to sue their attackers even if the assault occurred decades earlier.
The lawsuit contains one claim related directly to the alleged rape and a second claim stemming from remarks Trump made about Carroll's claims last October.
Carroll testified that writing about her encounter with Trump in a 2019 memoir led to her firing from Elle magazine, where she had worked as an advice columnist for 27 years, and even brought her death threats, leading her to buy bullets for a gun she possessed.
She said Thursday that a look at social media once the trial started revealed fresh insults against her as people labeled her a “liar, slut, ugly, old.”
“But I couldn’t be more proud to be here,” she testified.
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.
