E. Jean Carroll testifies against Donald Trump at civil rape trial

Presiding judge warns Trump legal team about former president’s social-media commentary on the proceedings.

E. Jean Carroll arrives to the Manhattan Federal Court on Tuesday. Picture: Reuters

Writer E. Jean Carroll testified in graphic detail that she was raped by Donald Trump in the 1990s, telling a federal jury that the ­alleged assault in a New York ­department store had scarred her over the decades since.

“I know people have been through a lot worse than this,” Ms Carroll said on Wednesday in a Manhattan courtroom.

“It left me unable to ever have a romantic life again.”

The columnist took the witness stand late in the morning as part of her civil lawsuit seeking damages against the former president for battery and defamation.

“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it he said it didn’t happen,” Ms Carroll, 79, told ­jurors. “He lied and shattered my reputation. I’m here to try and get my life back.”

Hours before Ms Carroll began her testimony, Mr Trump, who has denied the allegations, published a pair of posts on his ­social media site that criticised the writer and claimed her lawsuit was a political hit job.

“This is a fraudulent & false story – Witch Hunt!” he wrote in one post. In another he said: “There are no witnesses? Nobody saw this? She never made a police complaint?”

Federal district judge Lewis Kaplan, who is presiding over the trial, expressed concern about Mr Trump’s comments and warned that similar future conduct could place the former president in legal jeopardy. Judge Kaplan said Mr Trump was commenting “about stuff that has no business being spoken about”, adding that his ­efforts could be viewed as an ­attempt to influence the jury.

“We’re getting into an area, conceivably, where your client may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability,” the judge told Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina.

Mr Tacopina said he would speak to Mr Trump, who didn’t appear in court, “and ask him to refrain from any further posts ­regarding this case”.

Ms Carroll has filed a pair of lawsuits against Mr Trump. The trial, which began on Tuesday, centres on a complaint she filed in November, when a New York law went into effect that gave alleged long-ago survivors of sexual ­assault a new, one-year opportunity to file lawsuits.

The former columnist for Elle magazine made her allegation against Mr Trump in a book she published in 2019. She recounted the allegations for the nine-member jury, saying he raped her at New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store.

The two had met years earlier at a party, she testified, and Mr Trump recognised her during a chance encounter at the store. She testified that Mr Trump asked her for help choosing a gift.

“It was such a funny New York scene,” she testified. “I love to give advice and here was Donald Trump asking me for advice.”

The two laughed and chatted in the store, looking for potential gifts, she said. Mr Trump suggested going to the store’s lingerie section on a different floor. Ms Carroll said they joked about who should try on a see-through gray bodysuit once they were in the section, where, she said, she didn’t see store employees. They then went to the dressing room and it was there, she said, that Mr Trump assaulted her, describing to jurors in detail what she said happened during the alleged rape.

Ms Carroll said she confided in two friends about the alleged incident but never reported it to police or spoke publicly about it for decades. She said she feared retaliation from Mr Trump, was worried about losing her job and felt ashamed. “I thought it was my fault,” she said.

Ms Carroll said she had had flashbacks of the incident while doing ordinary activities such as walking her dog or cooking pasta. She told the jury that she had found herself unable to flirt with men.

Ms Carroll testified that it had been difficult for her to remember the exact date of the alleged ­assault, but that it occurred sometime in late 1995 or early 1996.

In 2019, after an excerpt of Ms Carroll’s book was published in New York Magazine, Mr Trump denied the rape and said she was “not my type”. After Mr Trump’s comments, Ms Carroll said, she faced attacks and lost her columnist job at Elle. “Nobody looked at me the same,” she said.

A spokesman for Hearst Magazines, which publishes Elle, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Still, Ms Carroll said in the midst of tears, she was happy. “I got to tell my story in court,” she said.

During opening statements on Tuesday, Mr Trump’s lawyers ­accused Ms Carroll of fabricating the alleged incident for publicity and political reasons. They are ­expected to cross examine her on Friday.

The Wall Street Journal