Donald Trump took to Truth Social to claim that the case being handled in the civil rape trial against him following legal action from former advice columnist E Jean Carroll is “a scam”.
“The E. Jean Carroll case, Ms. Bergdorf Goodman, is a made up SCAM,” the former president wrote on Wednesday. “Her lawyer is a political operative, financed by a big political donor that they said didn’t exist, only to get caught lying about that.”
“Just look at her CNN interview before & after the commercial break - Like a different person. She said there was a dress, using the ol’ Monica Lewinsky ‘stuff’, then she didn’t want to produce it,” he wrote. “The dress should be allowed to be part of the case. This is a fraudulent & false story--Witch Hunt!”
In a subsequent post, Mr Trump went on to claim that “they got caught lying! The Miss Bergdorf Goodman case is financed by a big political donor that they tried to hide”.
“Does anybody believe that I would take a then almost 60 year old woman that I didn’t know, from the front door of a very crowded department store, (with me being very well known, to put it mildly!), into a tiny dressing room, and …. her,” he wrote. “She didn’t scream? There are no witnesses? Nobody saw this? She never made a police complaint? If I was seen there with a woman-BIG PRESS. SCAM!”
Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts on Wednesday morning quickly made it into the court proceedings.
According to Adam Klasfeld of Law & Crime, Ms Carroll’s lawyer argued that Mr Trump’s Truth Social posts violated two court orders, those ordering participants not to discuss the attorneys or the issue of the DNA sample.
Judge Lewis Kaplan said that Mr Trump “for three years refused to give a DNA sample, and now he wants it in the case?”
The judge said the comments were “entirely inappropriate”.
Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina responded that he would “try to address that with my client” and that he would ask Mr Trump to “refrain from any further posts regarding this case”.
The judge responded, “Well, I hope you’re more successful,” and added that Mr Trump “may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability. And I think you know what I mean”.
The civil rape trial stems from Ms Carroll claiming that Mr Trump raped her in a dressing room almost 30 years ago.
Ms Carroll, then a magazine feature writer and TV host, bumped into Mr Trump in the upmarket New York department store Bergdorf Goodman.
As Ms Carroll wrote in her 2019 memoir What Do We Need Men For?, he recognised her as “that advice lady”. She knew him as “that real-estate tycoon”.
Mr Trump supposedly told her that he was there to buy a gift for “a girl”, and asked for help to choose an appropriate item.
She placed the incident in either late 1995 or early 1996 when the future president was married to Marla Maples.
The pair made their way to the lingerie section, where Mr Trump suggested that she try on a lace bodysuit.
She claims she jokingly said that he should try it on instead.
As they reached the dressing rooms, Ms Carroll alleges that Mr Trump shoved her against a wall, put his hands underneath her dress and pulled down her tights.
He then unzipped his pants, and “forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me”, she wrote.
A “colossal struggle” ensued, she said, and Ms Carroll eventually pushed him away and ran out of the dressing room. The episode was over in under three minutes, she wrote.
Ms Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said they tried for three years to obtain Mr Trump’s DNA sample to compare it with stains found on the dress she was wearing on the day.
After refusing to provide a sample, Mr Trump’s attorneys then made an 11th-hour offer to do so earlier this year. Judge Kaplan rejected the offer.
