Donald Trump’s accuser testifies he ‘raped me’ and ‘lied and shattered my reputation’
Former President Donald Trump’s accuser testified that he raped her and lied that it did not happen, shattering her reputation.
Columnist E Jean Carroll, 79, took the stand on the second day of Trump’s rape trial in Manhattan.
‘I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,’ Carroll said before the jury on Wednesday. ‘He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try and get my life back.’
Carroll admitted that she initially found Trump charming. Before Trump allegedly raped her in a dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1996, Carroll saw him at a party and on the street by Trump Tower.
‘I thought he was a well-known raconteur, a man about town, well-liked,’ she said.
Carroll’s lawyer Michael Ferrara asked: ‘Did you find him attractive?’
‘Yes. … he was very personable,’ she replied.
Carroll said she was ‘delighted’ to help Trump when he asked her to go with him to the store’s lingerie department to find a gift for another woman.
‘I’m a bored advice columnist. I love to give advice, and here was Donald Trump asking me for advice about buying a present,’ she said. ‘It was a wonderful prospect for me.’
Trump, 76, who has denied Carroll’s allegations, has not appeared at the trial. He is not required to, but his lawyers have said he may choose to testify.
The ex-president earlier on Wednesday ripped Carroll and the trial on his Truth Social platform.
‘The E. Jean Carroll case, Ms. Bergdorf Goodman, is a made up SCAM,’ wrote Trump, referring to the luxury department store where Carroll claims he raped her in 1996.
‘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.’
Trump added that ‘This is a fraudulent & false story–Witch Hunt!’
In another Truth Social post, Trump wrote: ‘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.
‘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!’
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