E. Jean Carroll defends her credibility under cross-examination in Trump rape trial
NEW YORK — A lawyer for Donald Trump repeatedly pressed E. Jean Carroll on Thursday about her inability to recall the precise date on which she says Trump raped her nearly three decades ago.
Carroll, a magazine writer, testified for a second day in her civil lawsuit accusing the former president of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. She is suing him for battery and defamation. He has said the alleged incident “never happened.”
The questioning got off to a terse start as Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina wished Carroll “good morning” twice before she would reply to him. “There ya go,” he said when she finally responded.
Carroll has said that she believes the alleged attack occurred in the evening on a day between the fall of 1995 and the spring of 1996, and under questioning from her own lawyer on Wednesday, she added that she believes it took place on a Thursday. A former Bergdorf Goodman employee testified that Thursdays were the only nights of the week the luxury department store stayed open late.
But Carroll has repeatedly said she can’t recall exactly what date it happened.
On Thursday, Tacopina questioned why Carroll said only now that it was a Thursday and why neither she nor two friends she says she told contemporaneously can recall the date.
“I wish to heaven we could give you a date,” Carroll said. “I wish we could give you a date.”
Carroll testified that she always had a hunch the alleged attack occurred on a Thursday, but didn’t identify the day of the week in a book she wrote or in interviews because she wasn’t absolutely sure and “I tried to stick to the facts.”
Tacopina also questioned Carroll about a 2017 email referencing Trump between her and her friend Carol Martin, in which Martin wrote: “As soon as we are both well enuf to scheme, we must do our patriotic duty again …” Carroll responded: “TOTALLY!!! I have something special for you when we meet.”
When Carroll testified, as she had also done Wednesday, that she couldn’t recall what the email meant, Tacopina asked how she could remember details from the alleged rape from at least 27 years ago but couldn’t recall anything about a six-year-old email.
“Those are facts that I could never forget,” Carroll said of the alleged attack. “This is an email among probably hundreds of emails between Carol and I that I have no recollection of.”
Tacopina also pressed Carroll on why she went public with her story when she did, in 2019. Though Tacopina suggested she was using the claim to try to attract a book publisher, Carroll disputed that, saying she was instead prompted by revelations about film producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual predation in The New York Times in 2017.
“When that happened, across the country women began telling their stories, and I was flummoxed [and thought], wait a minute, can we actually speak up and not be pummeled?” Carroll testified. “I thought, well this may be a way to change the culture of sexual violence. The light dawned. I thought, we can actually change things if we all tell our stories. And I thought by god, this may be the time.”
She continued: “It caused me to realize that staying silent does not work. It doesn’t work. If women speak up, we have a chance of limiting the harm that happens.”