A defiant former president Donald Trump on Wednesday told a CNN town hall audience that he has never met the woman who a New York jury said he sexually assaulted in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
Asked about the civil verdict against him in a suit brought by writer E Jean Carroll, Mr Trump claimed the former Elle advice columnist’s lawsuit was “election interference” and denied knowing her.
“This woman, I don’t know her. I never met her. I have no idea who she is,” he said in response to the query from moderator Kaitlan Collins.
Mr Trump asked Collins if he could “swear by [his] children that he never assaulted Ms Carroll and called her allegations “a fake...made up story”.
He also attacked the federal judge who oversaw the case, Lewis Kaplan, as “a horrible Clinton-appointed judge” who allowed Ms Carroll to “put everything in” as evidence over the objections of his legal team.
“He allowed her to put everything in. He allowed us to put nothing,” he said.
The former president’s appearance on CNN was the first time he has been on the network since before his term in the White House began.
Over the course of the broadcast, he refused to say whether he wants Ukraine to defeat Russia in the war that started with a Russian invasion last year, he said he would reimplement the family separation policy that saw children ripped from their parents at the US-Mexico border, and he claimed he would pardon many of the rioters who were convicted of assaulting police officers and damaging the US Capitol during the January 6 riot.
Mr Trump also repeatedly declined invitations to acknowledge that he, not President Joe Biden, won the 2020 election, which he maintains was somehow “rigged” against him despite no evidence to support such a claim and multiple recounts of ballots which have proved Mr Biden defeated him.
