The jury in E Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit accusing Donald Trump of rape and defamation is to hear closing arguments in New York on Monday.
The three women and six men who have listened to seven days of testimony, including three by Carroll herself, will then retire to consider whether they believe the advice columnist’s account of the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store dressing room in 1996.
Trump missed a Sunday afternoon deadline to notify the court if he wished to testify. During a visit to Ireland last week, the former president had threatened to turn up in court to confront Carroll after calling her a “disgrace” and a liar.
The judge, Lewis Kaplan, said that if Trump did not notify him by the deadline then “that ship will be irrevocably sailed”.
Trump’s legal team did not call any other witnesses on his behalf after saying that it would use Carroll’s own words to destroy her case. But the jurors did hear from the former US president when they were shown video extracts of Carroll’s lawyer questioning him during a deposition.
In the video, Trump appeared agitated, surly and combative as he repeatedly denied the alleged rape. The former president repeated his assertion that Carroll was “not my type”. Trump was also confused at times, including when he mistook a picture of the advice columnist for his second wife, Marla Maples.
Carroll’s legal team needs to show that “a preponderance of the evidence” backs their client’s case, a lower threshold than in a criminal case.
Carroll gave a detailed account of the alleged attack in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the spring of 1996. She said she was shopping with Trump when he pinned her against a dressing room wall.
Carroll told the jury the situation “turned absolutely dark”.
“He leaned down and pulled down my tights,” she said. “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear I didn’t want anything else to happen.”
Carroll said she could not escape Trump’s grip. Speaking quietly and slowly, she said he raped her.
The advice columnist’s account was backed by two friends who told the trial that she confided in them about the attack immediately afterwards but swore them to secrecy. Carroll told the jury that she finally went public as the #MeToo movement took off and women across the US came forward with experiences of sexual assault and harassment.
Carroll’s legal team also called two other women who said they were assaulted by Trump. One described him grabbing her breasts and attempting to put his hand up her skirt on a plane in 1979. The other said she was forcibly kissed by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, has attempted to discredit Carroll’s account by accusing her of conspiring with her friends to falsely accuse the former president because they don’t like his politics and in order to sell a book.
“They schemed to hurt Donald Trump politically,” he said at the opening of the trial.
Carroll is also suing Trump for defamation after he dismissed her as a liar. She told the court she had expected him to say they had a consensual encounter, not deny it altogether.
“It hit me and it laid me low because I lost my reputation. Nobody looked at me the same. It was gone. Even people who knew me looked at me with pity in their eyes, and the people who had no opinion now thought I was a liar and hated me,” she said.
Carroll said that after Trump accused her of lying, Elle magazine fired her as an advice columnist after 27 years.
She denied bringing the lawsuit against him because of her political views.
“I’m not settling a political score. I’m settling a personal score,” she said.
