E. Jean Carroll Civil Rape/Defamation Trial Against Donald Trump Begins

CBS News reports, Trial begins in E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump for defamation, battery:

Nine New Yorkers have been assigned the task of deciding if former President Donald Trump attacked and raped advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in a department store bathroom in the 1990s, and if he committed defamation against her after she went public with the allegation in 2019.

Carroll came forward with her story in 2019, alleging that Defendant Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman store in either 1995 or 1996. Defendant Trump denies the allegation. The civil trial stems from a lawsuit filed in November 2022, after New York passed a law that eliminated for one year the statute of limitations for adults who claim they were sexually assaulted. A previous lawsuit filed by Carroll in 2019 is still pending.

During opening statements, Shawn Crowley, an attorney for Carroll, said Defendant Trump and Carroll bumped into each other at the department store, at first engaging in friendly, joking banter as they walked through the store.

“Hey, you’re that advice lady,” Defendant Trump allegedly said, according to Crowley. She said Carroll responded, “Hey, you’re that real estate tycoon.”

At some point, the two allegedly entered a dressing room, and Crowley said Defendant Trump “suddenly” pushed Carroll against a changing room wall, raped her, and then tried to ruin her reputation after she told the story in 2019.

“The whole attack would last just a few minutes, but it would stay with her forever,” Crowley said.

Defendant Trump has denied the allegations and his attorney, Joe Tacopina, repeated that denial Tuesday.

“It all comes down to, do you believe the unbelievable?” Tacopina said, later adding, “He never raped her, and he never defamed her.”

Tacopina said he intended to show that Carroll and two friends “colluded to get their stories straight” about the alleged incident.

The nine jurors, chosen from a pool of about 100, will be kept anonymous throughout the proceedings. Their identities will be unknown even to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan and the attorneys arguing the case. [This is rarely done, almost exclusively for organized crime cases.] Each day they’ll report to undisclosed locations where U.S. Marshals will meet them and drive them to the courthouse. They’ll enter through a garage and be brought up to the courtroom on the 21st floor.

Kaplan told the jurors Tuesday morning that the unusual arrangement is to “protect all of you from unwanted attention, from harassment, from intimidation” that might arise from serving on a case involving a former president.

Kaplan advised, but did not order, the jurors to refrain from using their real names with each other. 

“If you’re Bill, you can be John for a few days,” the judge said.

The jurors were selected after being asked dozens of questions about their political affiliations, knowledge of the case and parties, experience with sexual misconduct allegations and news consumption habits.

They were asked if their experiences with any of those issues could compromise their ability to be impartial. Very few potential jurors indicated they couldn’t be fair, and none who did so were selected for the jury.

The process included questions about whether potential jurors had donated to the political campaigns of Trump, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama or President Biden.

They were asked if they were associated with groups known for extremism, a list that included QAnon, Antifa, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and the Ku Klux Klan. None said yes. They were also asked if their opinion of the Me Too movement might affect their beliefs, or if they believe Trump is treated unfairly by the media. One person said yes to the latter, and was not selected.

Before potential jurors were brought in Tuesday, Kaplan instructed attorneys on both sides to advise their clients against making any statements “that might cause civil unrest.” His instruction echoed similar ones given by a different judge on April 4, a block away in Manhattan Criminal Court, when Trump was arraigned on 34 state counts of felony falsification of business records counts unrelated to the Carroll case.  

It did not even take a day for Defendant Trump and his idiot son Eric to violate the Judge’s order. ‘Entirely inappropriate’: Judge in rape trial calls out Trump’s Truth Social rants:

It didn’t take long for Defendant Trump to be reprimanded in court for his rants on Truth Social. Defendant Trump sounded off Wednesday against writer E. Jean Carroll, moments before she was expected to testify in her civil rape case against him.

“The E. Jean Carroll case, Ms. Bergdorf Goodman, is a made up SCAM,” he wrote.

His rant came up in court immediately, with Carroll’s lawyer Robbie Kaplan reading it to the judge.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is no relation to the lawyer, called Defendant Trump’s comments “entirely inappropriate.”

Defendant Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said he’ll “try to address that with my client” and request that he stop talking about this case publicly. Trump is not attending the trial.

“Well, I hope you’re more successful,” Judge Kaplan continued. He noted Defendant Trump “may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability. … And I think you know what I mean.”

The judge mentioned that Defendant Trump was trying to go beyond speaking to his supporters and appeared to be trying to speak to the jury, i.e., jury tampering.

Defendant Trump has already been warned about social media posts and other actions that appeared to try to intimidate people involved in his criminal case involving hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

The Judge also admonished Defendant Trump’s idiot son, Eric. Judge warns Donald Trump ‘now sailing in harm’s way’ after Eric Trump flouts rape trial rules:

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan warned Joseph Tacopina, an attorney for Defendant Trump, that his client was in “harm’s way” after Eric Trump tweeted about E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegations despite instructions from the judge.

[F]ollowing a lunch break, attorneys for Carroll complained that Eric Trump had posted complaints about the case on Wednesday despite the judge’s warning.

“Jean Carroll’s legal battle against my father is allegedly being FUNDED by political activist Reid Hoffman (co-founder of Linkedin),” Eric Trump said in a tweet. “A civil lawsuit, being funded by a billionaire, with no direct involvement in the case, out of pure hatred, spite or fear of a formidable candidate, is an embarrassment to our country, should be illegal, and tells you everything you need to know about the case at hand.”

Kaplan warned that Defendant Trump was “now sailing in harm’s way with his [idiot] son.”

“If I was in your shoes, I’d be having a conversation with your client,” Kaplan told Tacopina.

E. Jean Carroll took the stand today. ‘I’m here because Donald Trump raped me’: E. Jean Carroll tells jury she stepped forward to ‘get my life back’:

In her grueling first day of testimony, one-time advice columnist E. Jean Carroll cast off her public persona as the answer lady and emotionally bared all for jurors.

She spoke of her regrets, insecurities, and what she described as the biggest mistake of her life — entering into the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman with a man who would become a U.S. president.

“I’m here because Defendant Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Carroll began her testimony by declaring. “He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try to get my life back.”

Narrating the alleged sexual assault to the jury with graphic precision, Carroll said: “He pulled down my tights and his hand, his fingers went into my vagina, which was extremely painful.” She spared no details, telling jurors that Trump “curved” his fingers inside of her.

“As I’m sitting here today, I still feel it,” she said.

Asked what happened next, Carroll replied: “Then he inserted his penis.”

‘This is my moment’

Shortly after, Carroll cast her head down and her voice quaked as she described allegedly lifting up her knee and struggling to break free. It was only one of the times that Carroll fought back emotion. Her voice wavered when speaking about the alleged rape — and intrusive thoughts about it. Only once, Carroll appeared to lose a battle to maintain her composure, late in her first day of testimony.

Asked by her attorney whether she second-guessed her decision to step forward, Carroll testified: “I’ve regretted this 100 times.”

Then, she began to transition by saying “in the end,” and her testimony stopped for a lengthy pause. She began to cry, and her attorney asked her if she wanted to gather herself together. Instead, Carroll plunged ahead through her tears.

“Being able to get my day in court finally is everything to me,” she said. “So I’m happy.”

Carroll then snapped herself back into control.

“I’m going to get myself together here,” she said. “I’m in court. This is my moment. I’m not going to sit here and cry and waste everybody’s time.”

The remark was emblematic of Carroll’s testimony about the difference between her public and private personas.

Carroll told the jurors that the public knew her as the “Ask E. Jean” answer lady, a temperament she says was instilled in her Indiana upbringing in the post-World War II generation. The other persona, she testified, silently harbored a secret for decades and the trauma that went with it. Then, inspired by the #MeToo movement, she says, she broke her silence.

“You’re that advice lady”

Some four years ago, Carroll went public with allegations that Defendant Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. When New York Magazine published an excerpt from her book detailing those claims in 2019, Trump responded by telling reporters: “She’s not my type.”

Cutting through the subtext, Carroll said coolly that Defendant Trump had been implying she was “too ugly to attack, too ugly to rape.” (Trump would later mix Carroll up with his ex-wife Marla Maples during a deposition.)

That remark, and others, sparked Carroll’s original defamation lawsuit. Carroll filed a separate lawsuit after New York passed the Adult Survivors Act, which allowed her to confront her allegations directly by suspending the statute of limitations. The trial currently taking place is on her second lawsuit.

Carroll told jurors there were many reasons she waited so long to step forward. Among them, she said, Defendant Trump had a chummy relationship with ex-Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, who owned another network that hosted her show. She said her friend, local TV anchorwoman Carol Martin, warned her: “He has 200 lawyers. He will bury you.” Above all, however, she said, were her feelings of guilt and shame for having walked into it.

As Carroll told it, the fateful encounter began after Defendant Trump put up his hand as she was leaving the store. Imitating the gesture on the stand, she called that the “universal symbol” for her to stop.

“Hey, you’re that advice lady,” Defendant Trump said, according to Carroll.

Carroll said she replied: “Hey, you’re that real estate tycoon.”

Defendant Trump, she said, told her that he wanted her advice on a gift for a woman, and they went back into the store. She said that Trump looked at a see-through, gray body suit and asked her to try it on.

“You put it on,” Carroll says she responded. “It’s your color.”

‘I thought it was my fault’

She acknowledged that she found Defendant Trump attractive and said that she was flirting with him.

“I started looking on it as a Saturday Night Live sketch,” she said. “Donald Trump was being very light, very joshing and pleasant, and very funny.”

Carroll says that things took a darker turn when Defendant Trump led her into the dressing room. She acknowledged he didn’t force her into the room. She said she entered voluntarily. After that, she said, things took a dark turn as he pushed her against the wall and she hit her head. He then raped her, she claims.

Entering that dressing room, Carroll said, was the biggest mistake of her life, but she testified that the gravity of what occurred didn’t immediately dawn upon her. In fact, Carroll said, she said that she thought her friend, author Lisa Birnbach, would find the alleged encounter funny. She said that Birnbach instead told her: “He raped you, E. Jean. You should go to the police.”

Carroll said that she didn’t want to, fearing the personal and professional consequences, and later took her friend Martin’s advice instead.

“I was ashamed,” Carroll said. “I thought it was my fault.”

Both women are now on her witness list.