Trump found liable for sexual battery, defamation

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Weird to think that if he had never decided to become president, all this stuff would probably have barely made a blip on the radar. He didn't seem to realize that becoming a politician made him a very different target than being a celebrity mogul did. Cases would have arisen relatively quietly, and he would have settled or beaten them down relatively quietly. Not saying that is right, but it is how things go. What the public accepts from celebrities is very different from what they accept from political leaders.

Writer E. Jean Carroll, who alleges in a lawsuit that Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s in a New York department store, was questioned Thursday by a lawyer for the former president who repeatedly suggested her claim was made up.

“You were supposedly raped?” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina asked Carroll early in his cross-examination.

“I was raped,” Carroll responded.

Asked if she would agree that not reporting the attack to the police "is an odd fact," Carroll said: "No. Many women do not go to the police and I understand why."

"It's the usual fact," she added.

Earlier in the day, Carroll acknowledged to Tacopina that she is a longtime Democrat, and that when she first heard Trump was running for president, “I was in disbelief. I felt really bad.”

He asked her about a passage on the attack in an earlier draft of her book, where she wrote she was going public because she didn't like his policies as president.

Tacopina pressed her on details about the alleged attack in the afternoon, asking skeptically about her contention that she didn’t remember seeing any other people on the sixth floor in the lingerie department of a Bergdorf Goodman, where she said she was raped in a dressing room.

“I saw no one on the floor,” she said, telling Tacopina her attention was trained on her conversation with Trump, which she thought was “funny” until he assaulted her.

Tacopina asked why she didn’t “scream for help.”

“I’m not a screamer. I was in a panic, fighting,” she said, becoming visibly emotional. “You can’t beat up on me for not screaming."

Tacopina said he was not.

“People always ask, 'Why didn’t you scream?' Some women scream, some do not,” Carroll said.

“He raped me, whether I screamed or not,” she said, sobbing on the stand while also speaking loudly. "If I was trying to make a lie I would say I was screaming my head off but I did not scream. I did not scream."

After she fled the store, Carroll said she called a friend, writer Lisa Birnbach, to tell her what happened, and that she was laughing during the call.

Tacopina quoted from Carroll's book, where she wrote that Birnbach told her it wasn't funny, "but I could not stop laughing."

"You say that was the strangest thing of all?" Tacopina asked. "Yes, absolutely," Carroll answered, attributing her reaction to being "full of adrenaline."

She said Birnbach told her she'd been raped and she should call the police. "I said no way," Carroll said.

"I did not want to tell my story," she testified. "I was afraid of Donald Trump."

Asked if she would agree that not reporting the attack to the police "is an odd fact," Carroll said: "No. Many women do not go to the police and I understand why."

"It's the usual fact," she added.

Earlier in the day, Carroll acknowledged to Tacopina that she is a longtime Democrat, and that when she first heard Trump was running for president, “I was in disbelief. I felt really bad.”

He asked her about a passage on the attack in an earlier draft of her book, where she wrote she was going public because she didn't like his policies as president.

The passage read, "Now after watching him for two years he wants to kill me and he’s polluting my air, poisoning my water, cooking my planet, and as he stacks the courts against my body, state by state, I’m afraid my free speech will be next, so now I will tell you what happened," Tacopina said.

Carroll said that was "a draft," adding, "I said to take that out before it's printed."

The former advice columnist acknowledged that she thought disclosing the attack in her book, “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal," would help sales. "I was wrong," she said.

In her lawsuit and on the witness stand, Carroll said she'd been inspired to come forward by a New York Times story on sexual misconduct allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein.

She told Tacopina that was indeed the inspiration, and that she believed coming forward when she did could help combat "the culture of sexual violence" in the country.

“It caused me to realize staying silent does not work,” she said.

Tacopina is scheduled to continue his questioning of Carroll when the trial resumes Monday.

During direct examination earlier in the day, Carroll described the torrent of abuse she's received online echoing Trump's insults about her, including posts on his Truth Social account Wednesday accusing her of a "scam."

"This morning for instance I thought I would just take a peek at my Twitter" and found an "onslaught" of "vile" messages, including ones calling her "slut," "ugly" and "old," Carroll said. Nevertheless, she added, "I couldn't be more proud to be here."

“Are you on Truth Social, Ms. Carroll?”

On the second day of her testimony on Thursday, as one of her lawyers questioned her, the magazine writer and longtime Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll was revisiting the past few years of her experience of social media. She was, she told her attorney, on the platform, former president Donald Trump’s hastily launched Twitter clone.

Carroll advocated for the new New York state law under which she is suing Trump, which provided a one-year window for adult sexual abuse victims to bring lawsuits against their alleged abusers after the statute of limitations has passed. (The trial is in federal court because Carroll and Trump reside in different states.) In the Manhattan courtroom Thursday, during her second day of testimony, her attorney asked Carroll why she had done so. “Because I understand why women, particularly, and some men, do not come forward,” she replied. “It takes years, and some maturity, and age.”

As a veteran magazine writer, Carroll has in recent years turned the focus of her work and public statements to such questions. Testifying in a federal courthouse, she reflected on many of the common matters that often go unaddressed in high-profile sex abuse trials. There’s a playbook for defense attorneys in these cases: They poke for inconsistencies and ask why alleged victims didn’t do one thing or another at the time they say they were abused. Joe Tacopina, the celebrity lawyer representing Trump, repeatedly sparred with Carroll about her account. They went back and forth about the meaning of several words such as “inconceivable,” “satire,” and “skimpy,” with Tacopina painting himself as a folksy foil to the literary-minded witness. He asked why she didn’t scream, and provoked one of the day’s highest-temperature moments.

“He raped me whether I screamed or not,” Carroll said, her voice rising.

“You need a minute, Ms. Carroll?”

“No, go right on.”

Tacopina, wearing a tight suit with his hair gelled, has previously represented Alex Rodriguez and A$AP Rocky. In recent weeks, he has become a cable news fixture on account of his involvement in Trump’s other ongoing Manhattan legal matter. Carroll was aware of the persona.

“You work out all the time,” she said to Tacopina at one point. “We’ve read about it.”

Tacopina seemed to have to stop himself from engaging.

During his questioning, Carroll’s attorney displayed several of the tweets that have been directed at her. Trump’s initial denial in June 2019 infamously centered on his description of Carroll as “not my type.” Years on, his supporters were continuing to echo the idea. Carroll said the comments she’s received remain “equally disparaging and hurtful” relative to the initial blowback.

“I looked at my Twitter this morning,” she said. “They haven’t stopped.”

E. Jean Carroll, the writer accusing Donald Trump of rape and defamation, on Monday denied making up her claims to drive publicity for her memoir.

Testifying in Manhattan federal court after a judge denied Trump's request for a mistrial, Carroll said she wasn't seeking attention through appearances on TV and podcasts, while acknowledging they were an important driver of book sales.

Carroll also said that she hides her inner suffering in her role as an advice columnist, and that going to parties related to her lawsuits against Trump and stating publicly she was doing "fabulous" didn't mean she was lying about him.

"In this courtroom, I'm being forced to tell the truth," she told Trump's lawyer Joe Tacopina on her second day undergoing cross-examination.

In seeking a mistrial, Tacopina sent an 18-page letter early on Monday accusing U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of bias against Trump.

Trump's lawyer said the effect of several "unfair and prejudicial" rulings by Kaplan "manifests a deeper leaning towards one party over another," including comments where the judge "openly expresses favoritism."

Tacopina said Kaplan, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, should have let him question Carroll about why she did not seek security camera footage of the alleged rape.

Tacopina also challenged Kaplan's statement that Trump might be "sailing in harm's way" after his son Eric Trump discussed on Twitter how LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman was helping fund Carroll's case.

Kaplan ruled last Wednesday that Trump's lawyers could not mention Hoffman at the trial, calling it "unfairly prejudicial."

Requests for mistrials are often long shots, though they often form a basis for eventual appeals.

A writer suing Donald Trump in a Manhattan federal court for rape says she did not come forward at first because she was a "member of the silent generation".

Ms Carroll took the stand for the third time on Monday, facing another round of questioning from Mr Trump's attorneys, who pressed her on why she did not report the alleged assault to the police.

"I was born in 1943," Ms Carroll said. "Women like me were taught and trained to keep our chins up and to not complain."

Ms Carroll added that she was ashamed of the alleged assault and had believed it to be her fault.

I really hope this isn't premature.

I am disturbed by the relative lack of media coverage and general interest about this.

I get it's a civil trial and whatever fine he might get he will easily be able to afford

I get so much else is going on with Trump.

I get that Trump is a big-time misogynist is baked in.

But a former President is on trial for rape!! Right now!!



It very well might be. This is a he said, she said about something alleged to have happened in the 90s.

Is he, though?

Pretty sure he’s on trial for defamation.. no?

Donald Trump’s defence attorney grilled E Jean Carroll over old texts and social media posts and her love of The Apprentice on day two of her cross examination in a civil battery and defamation trial on Monday.

Ms Carroll, who has accused the former president of raping her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in 1996 and defaming her by calling it a “hoax”, testified that she was a “big fan” of the reality TV show hosted by Mr Trump.

“I had never seen such a witty competition on television,” Ms Carroll said, adding that she had written a glowing Facebook post about The Apprentice because she wanted to “boost” two friends who were appearing on it.

Ms Carroll, 79, testified that she hadn’t watched the end of the show where Mr Trump fired contestants.

Joe Tacopina, lead counsel for the former president, also sparred with Ms Carroll over whether her rape claim had been taken from the plotline of an episode of Law & Order.

“You know there’s a Law & Order episode from 2012 that featured a woman getting raped in the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room?” he asked on Monday.

Ms Carroll acknowledged she was aware of the episode, and was a fan of the show, adding that the long-running crime drama’s writers were “very good at keying in to the psyche of their viewers”.

But she denied it had led her to come forward with the rape allegations in 2019.

“That was amazing to me,” she said when she learned about the episode. When Mr Tacopina asked if she meant it was an “amazing coincidence”, she replied: “Astonishing.”

On re-direct, Ms Carroll’s attorney Mike Ferrara asked her: “Are you making up your accusation based on what happened in a popular TV show?”

“No,” she replied.

Mr Tacopina also asked Ms Carroll about a 2012 Facebook post where she had asked whether anyone would have sex with Mr Trump for $17,000, even if they could keep their eyes closed and prevent him from speaking.

Ms Carroll acknowledged writing the post, and said she had made several jokes about the former president on social media.

Mr Tacopina went on to ask Ms Carroll about texts she had sent to her friend and confidante Carol Martin, who is due to testify at trial, arranging dinner dates with a group including Mr Trump’s niece Mary Trump, and MSNBC host Katie Phang.

In one text to her friend Carol Martin, Ms Carroll wrote of the get-together: “It’s gonna be a whoop”, implying she was enjoying the attention of the lawsuit. Ms Carroll said while she had received a lot of support from friends, she was not interested in publicity from the rape allegations.

Mr Tacopina took Ms Carroll through numerous media interviews she had given after the rape claims were made public in a New York magazine excerpt of her book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.

Ms Carroll testified that she had been disappointed in the lack of interest in the book, and had complained to her publicists at 42 West for not getting her more press attention.

“The book was not selling. The book was a dud. It was an absolute dud,” she said.

She was also shown an interview where she had described her life as “fabulous” after the book was published.

“That is what I’d like my life to appear to be,” she said. “That is how I want people to perceive it.”

As he had done on day one of cross-examination on Thursday, Mr Tacopina repeatedly quizzed Ms Carroll about why she hadn’t gone to the police over the alleged rape.

“I am a woman of the silent generation,” she replied. “Women like me were taught and trained to keep our chins up and never complain. The fact that I never went to the police is not surprising. I would never call the police about something I was ashamed of. I thought it was my fault.”

Ms Carroll’s response was struck from the record for not responding to the asked question.

She testified that she had frequently advised readers of her Elle advice column Ask E Jean to immediately report sexual assault to police and seek professional help.

In another heated exchange, Ms Carroll said that she had not sued former CBS CEO Les Moonves after accusing him of sexual assault because he had simply denied the claim.

“He didn’t call me names, he didn’t grind my face into the mud like Donald Trump did.”

Ms Carroll was further quizzed on whether she had tried to coerce incriminating details from Natasha Stoynoff, a former People magazine reporter who is expected to give evidence about being allegedly sexually assaulted by Mr Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2005.

Excerpts were produced from a 2020 interview Ms Carroll did with Ms Stoynoff for The Atlantic where she suggested that Ms Carroll had tried to force Ms Stoynoff to say the former president was “grinding” on her.

Ms Carroll denied she had tried to get Ms Stoynoff to say that, adding she had asked her to think “whether it was a possibility”.
Ms Carroll also testified that she had been to Bergdorf Goodman regularly over the years, making 23 purchases between 2001 and 2013 at the luxury department store, and that it was not a place she was afraid of.

Mr Trump’s defence team also played an excerpt of an interview Ms Carroll gave to CNN’s Anderson Cooper in 2019 where she said that most people think of rape as sexy.

Ms Carroll said she had been trying to make the point that popular culture was “saturated” with depictions of sexual assault.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who had earlier dismissed a motion for mistrial by the defence, frequently scolded Mr Tacopina for being argumentative, disorganised, mishandling exhibits and for the length of time the cross examination was taking.

After spending three full days on the witness stand, Ms Carroll was excused on Monday afternoon.

Donald Trump will not testify in his own defense in writer E. Jean Carroll's civil defamation and battery case against the former president, Trump's attorney said Tuesday at the end of the day's testimony.

As Judge Lewis Kaplan was asking the lawyers Tuesday to forecast the remainder of the case, defense attorney Joe Tacopina affirmed that he has just one expert witness.

"So Mr. Trump is not going to be coming?" the judge asked. "Correct," Tacopina said.

"It's his call," the judge said. "I understand that. You understand that. He understands that."

During Tuesday's testimony, a businesswoman told jurors that Trump had groped her during a flight to New York in 1979, in what Carroll's attorneys said showed a pattern of behavior on Trump's part. Leeds is one of two women who the court has ruled are allowed to testify about prior alleged assaults by Trump.

Leeds, who first made her allegations to The New York Times just before the 2016 presidential election, testified that she was on a flight to New York when she was bumped up to first class from her coach seat and wound up next to Trump.

"When I got up there and sat down, the gentleman sitting by the window introduced himself as Donald Trump. We shook hands," Leeds, who was 37 at the time, testified. "What happened was, they served a meal. And it was cleared and we were sitting there, when all of a sudden Trump decided to kiss me and grope me."

She said there was no conversation -- "It was out of the blue."

Leeds described the alleged encounter "like a tussle," saying, "He was trying to kiss me. He was trying to pull me towards him. He was grabbing my breasts. It was like he had 40 million hands."

"It was when he started putting his hand up my skirt, that gave me a jolt of strength," testified Leeds, who said she freed herself and went "storming back to my seat in the back of coach."

Trump has denied the allegations.

Leeds, like Carroll, did not scream or yell during the alleged encounter.

"It never occurred to me to yell out," Leeds said. When asked "Why not?" by Carroll's attorney, she said, "I don't know."

Leeds recalled waiting until every other passenger had deplaned before she left, because she didn't want to risk running into Trump again. She said she told no one about the alleged incident.

"I did not tell anybody at work because I didn't think they would be interested in my experience," Leeds said. "At that time and that place, in the work environment, men could basically get away with a lot."

Leeds said she only revealed what allegedly happened to her when Trump started running for president.

"I started off telling my family, telling my children, telling my friends, my neighbors, my book club, anyone and everyone who would listen to me," Leeds said. "I thought he was not the kind of person we wanted as president."

Leeds said that three years after the alleged incident, she saw Trump with his pregnant then-wife, Ivana, at a Humane Society of New York gala at Saks Fifth Avenue, where she was giving out table assignments.

"He looked at me and he said, 'I remember you, you're that c--- from the airplane,'" Leeds said. "It was like a bucket of cold water thrown over my head."

On cross-examination, Tacopina asked, incredulously, "That was from a few-second interaction from an airplane that he remembered you, apparently?"

Leeds testified that she could not recall the exact date of the alleged assault, could not recall the origin of her LaGuardia-bound flight, and did not know who Trump was at the time, describing him as "some random guy sitting next to me on the airplane."

"Fair to say you can't name one witness who saw what happened to you?" Tacopina asked. "Correct," Leeds replied.

"Not a single person can corroborate your story?" Tacopina asked. "That is correct," Leeds said.

On re-direct, Carroll's attorney, Michael Ferrara, asked, "Are you making this up because you hate Donald Trump?"

"No, I'm not making this up," Leeds answered.

Asked why she didn't report the alleged assault to her bosses, since it occurred on a business trip, Leeds said, "If I had gone in and complained about what had happened, my feeling was my boss would say to me, 'That's really too bad, how about lunch?'"

"I didn't want any sympathy. I wanted this job," said Leeds. "It was a good paying job."

The jury also saw a clip of Trump on the 2016 campaign trial denying Leeds' accusation, saying, "She would not be my first choice" -- echoing his response to Carroll that "she's not my type."

Earlier Tuesday, a friend of Carroll, writer Lisa Birnbach, testified that Carroll called her within "five to seven minutes" of Trump's alleged attack at Bergdorf Goodman's.

"She told me that Donald Trump recognized her outside or right in the doorway of Bergdorf Goodman, he asked her to help him shop, and assaulted her upstairs in a dressing room," Birnbach testified.

Birnbach testified that she "thought it was kind of nutty" for Carroll to go to the lingerie department with Trump, but she did not think it was dangerous.

"I had just spent a few days with him," Birnbach said of Trump, referring to two days she spent at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate for a Feb. 12, 1996, piece she wrote for New York magazine. "He didn't strike me as dangerous."

Birnbach described the alleged assault as she said Carroll relayed it to her, saying, "He slammed his whole arm, pinned her against the wall with his arm and shoulders and with his free hand pulled down her tights."

"And E. Jean said to me many times, 'He pulled down my tights, he pulled down my tights.' Almost like she couldn't believe it had just happened to her," Birnbach said.

"As soon as she said that, even though I knew my children didn't know the word, I ducked out of the room and I whispered 'E. Jean, he raped you, you should go to the police,'" Birnbach testified.

"She said, 'No, no I don't want to go to the police,'" Birnbach told the jury, saying that Carroll made her promise that "'you will never speak of this again and promise me that you will tell no one.' And I promised her both those things."

A former executive at Bergdorf Goodman, Robert Salerno, testified Tuesday that there were no security cameras in the sixth floor lingerie department at the time of the alleged assault. He also testified that he's seen Trump shop in the store.

In earlier testimony, Carroll described being in somewhat of a stupor when she called Birnbach after leaving the department store, laughing as she relayed her alleged encounter with Trump. It was Birnbach, Carroll said, who told her to stop laughing because she had been raped.

"And even when Lisa said it, it took a real effort for me to take it in," Carroll testified. "Lisa is the one who focused my brain for that moment. It was Lisa saying that."

Birnbach said the account that Carroll gave when she went public with the accusation in her 2019 book matched what Carroll told her in the spring of 1996.

"After I read the excerpt, I called E. Jean and told her how brave she was and what a good piece it was," Birnbach said.

"She's not a victim," Birnbach said. "She doesn't want anybody's pity. She is somebody who, and I think it's the way she was raised, instead of wallowing, she puts on lipstick, dusts herself off, and moves on. I think that's how she has gotten through her life."

Birnbach told the jury that she supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, was "surprised and upset" Trump won, and, on her podcast, called Trump a "narcissistic sociopath" who is "an infection like herpes that we can't get rid of."

But, she said, she was only testifying "because my friend, my good friend, who is a good person, told me something terrible that happened to her. As a result she lost her employment and her life became very, very difficult. I am here because I want the world to know that she was telling the truth."

"Do you recall saying in a Facebook post the following: 'Does it get worse than Donald Trump? I'll tell you in my entire life I've never felt a hatred like a feel toward this person,'" defense attorney Perry Brandt asked Birnbach. He asked if, on a podcast, she said, "President Trump, and I don't like to use those two words together." On a different podcast, he asked if she said of Trump, "He's a madman. He's a narcissistic sociopath. He's a malignant sociopath. He's a Russian agent. He's bad, he's bad, and God knows what he can do before he leaves."

Birnbach testified that all of those things sound like something she would have said.

On re-direct, Carroll's attorney, Shawn Crowley, asked Birnbach, "When Ms. Carroll had called you in 1996 and told you he had just assaulted her, was he a political figure?" Birnbach replied, "Not at all."

"Donald Trump in 1996 was a well-known New York person," Birnbach said. "He was not in politics. He was not near politics. He was a guy who liked publicity and attention and he was also a known womanizer. My friend wasn't raped by a president. She was assaulted by a guy, a real estate guy."

"Would you lie to prevent Donald Trump from being president?" Crowley asked.

"Never," Birnbach replied.

Testimony concluded for the day with the plaintiff's expert on the witness stand.

Dr. Leslie Lebowitz, a clinical psychologist, testified that she had concluded that Carroll had been harmed by Trump's alleged assault.

"There were three dominant ways that I felt that she had been harmed," Lebowitz said. "She has suffered from painful, intrusive memories for many years. She endured a diminishment in how she thought and felt about herself. And perhaps most prominently, she manifests very notable avoidance symptoms which have curtailed her romantic and intimate life and caused profound loss."

Carroll's lawsuit is her second against Trump related to her rape allegation.

She previously sued Trump in 2019 after the then-president denied her rape claim by telling The Hill that Carroll was "totally lying," saying, "I'll say it with great respect: No. 1, she's not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?" That defamation suit has been caught in a procedural back-and-forth over the question of whether Trump, as president, was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government when he made those remarks.

If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in that suit -- which means that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.

A former People magazine writer, testifying in E. Jean Carroll's defamation and battery case against former President Donald Trump, told the jury that Trump pushed her against a wall and began kissing her while she was visiting his Mar-a-Lago estate on assignment in 2005.

Former People writer Natasha Stoynoff told the jury she was at Mar-a-Lago in late 2005 to write an article on Donald and Melania Trump's first wedding anniversary, when Trump asked to show her a room in the estate.

"I followed him and we went in through these back doors and down the hall and turned right into a room," Stoynoff said. "I'm looking around, I'm thinking, 'Wow, really nice room,' wondering what he wants to show me, and I hear the door shut behind me."

Stoynoff said she had interviewed Trump on a number of occasions as part of her assignment on the "Trump beat" for People. She testified that Trump asked her into the room while Melania was changing clothes in preparation for their interview outside.

"By the time I turn around, he has my hands on my shoulders and he pushes me against the wall and he starts kissing me," Stoynoff testified. She said that she tried to shove him away.

"He came toward me again and I tried to shove him again," Stoynoff said. "He was kissing me and he was against me, holding my shoulder back."

She testified that she said no words.

"I couldn't. I tried. I was just flustered and shocked. No words came out of me," Stoynoff told the jury.

"Did you tell him to stop?" Carroll's attorney, Michael Ferrara, asked. "I couldn't," Stoynoff answered. She said the encounter ended when a butler entered the room.

Stoynoff described herself as "ashamed and humiliated at what had happened," and testified she said nothing about it to her bosses at People because she didn't want to cause trouble at the magazine.

She said she first decided to tell her story after she saw the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape that surfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign, on which Trump is overheard boasting to then-host Billy Bush about grabbing and kissing women without consent.

After Stoynoff made her allegation in 2016, Trump denied her claim by saying "Look at her. You tell me what you think. I don't think so," in a response that Carroll's attorneys said echoed his assertion that Carroll was "not my type."

On cross-examination, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina asked Stoynofff if she had a legal claim against Trump. She said no.

Earlier Wednesday, Tacopina told Judge Lewis Kaplan that Trump will not mount a defense in the case.

Tacopina told the judge that he had decided not to call an expert witness that had been expected to testify for the defense. "We're not going to move forward," Tacopina said.

The judge told the jury to expect to get the case "early next week."

Carroll's sister, Cande Carroll, testified Wednesday afternoon that she found out about her sister's alleged rape in 2019 when Carroll sent her an email containing a link to an excerpt of Carroll's 2019 book that contained the rape allegation.

That she found out about it that way was hardly surprising, she said, because she and her older sister "just didn't talk about those things."

On cross-examination, the younger Carroll testified that she and Carroll had a close relationship in the 1990s when the alleged rape occurred.

"You talked almost daily?" defense attorney Perry Brandt asked. "Most days," Carroll responded, before Brandt asked her to affirm that the first she had heard of the alleged sexual assault by Trump was in 2019.

Earlier Wednesday, a psychologist testified that Carroll continued to shop at Bergdorf Goodman after the alleged attack because "she didn't feel that Bergdorf Goodman raped her."

"She didn't blame the store. She blamed herself," said Dr. Leslie Lebowitz, who evaluated Carroll for the case.

The defense suggested the fact that Carroll continued to shop at Bergdorf's, saved the dress she wore the evening of the alleged assault, and watched Trump's reality television show, "The Apprentice," were behaviors out of step with the deep trauma Carroll said she suffered.

Lebowitz pushed back against the inference from the defense that Carroll's rape claim against Trump could not be true because she did not act like it actually happened.

"I think anywhere Ms. Carroll could see evidence that she was negatively affected by what happened, she would fight against it. So to not go back into Bergdorf's would have been really obvious, given how much she loved that store," Lebowitz said.

The same holds true for the dress, Lebowitz said.

"I think that she loves clothes and that was the most expensive dress she'd ever brought," Lebowitz said. "It would have been impossible to avoid the realization that she was that negatively affected.

As for watching "The Apprentice," Lebowitz said there was excitement about the show in Carroll's professional and social circles. To not watch would have forced her to reveal why.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Chad Seigel asked Lebowitz if her diagnosis concluded that Carroll had been raped.

"You're not offering an opinion in this case whether Ms. Carroll was raped?" Seigel asked.

"I'm not," Lebowitz replied.

Lebowitz said that Carroll did meet some of the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, including exhibiting signs of memories affected by trauma. She described a moment during her evaluation when Carroll "began to squirm in her seat" because she appeared to be "re-experiencing" elements of the alleged assault.

She also told the jury that rape victims commonly experience self-blame.

If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in that suit -- which means that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.

I have little doubt that he’s all the vile things many people in his business and private life say he is - including a rapist, multiple times over. Definitely plenty of news stories about that - the 13yo girl he raped with epstein comes to mind -> + multiple other accusations.

It’ll be sweet sweet justice if he goes down for multiple crimes he’s committed, including this alleged one. Also kinda funny to picture him ranting and raving about being sent to a hoax jail for hoax crimes. Ok, crazy old man.. take your meds and stfu.

I read some things about that...and it was disturbing, but so like we for sure had a rapist as a president and that's gross. Idk I guess that 13 year old shouldn't have 'seduced' them.

Jurors hearing E. Jean Carroll's civil suit against Donald Trump on Thursday were shown a deposition video of the former president confusing the accuser with his ex-wife Marla Maples.

"It's Marla," Trump said during a deposition for the case when shown a picture of him, Carroll and Carroll's ex-husband in the 1980s. "That's Marla, yeah. That's my wife," Trump continued before being corrected by his lawyer, Alina Habba. "No, that's Carroll," Habba said.

Trump then responded the photo was "very blurry."

The video is likely all that jurors will see of the former president — Trump's lawyers said Wednesday that he will not testify in the case.

Trump, however, told reporters on a golf course in Ireland on Thursday that he was "going back to New York" because of the case. Asked if he was going to the trial, he said, "I'll probably attend," according to a Sky News video of his remarks. "She's a fake," he said of Carroll. "It's a disgrace," he added.

In the excerpts played for the jury in Manhattan federal court, Trump maintained that despite the Maples mixup, Carroll was "not my type." Later he was asked if the three women he'd married were his type. "Yeah," he answered.

Trump also acknowledged that when Carroll went public with her claims in a book she'd written, the then-president accused her of trying to boost her sales with a made-up story for financial and political reasons, even though at that point he didn't know her political affiliation, her financial situation or her publisher.

Asked what the basis for his allegations were, Trump answered, "I don't know."

At other times in the video he was more combative, and he repeatedly insulted Carroll throughout the deposition, calling her a "whack job" and "sick," among other insults.

He repeatedly denied her rape allegation, and said he'd been outspoken while defending himself publicly because “I was offended at this woman’s lie.”

She is a sick person, in my opinion. Really sick. There is something wrong with her," Trump said.

In the deposition, Trump also mocked two other women who've accused him of sexual misconduct, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff.

Testifying live Thursday was Carol Martin, a longtime friend of Carroll's who is one of two people Carroll said she told about the attack shortly after it happened.

Martin said she advised Carroll not to report the incident the police. "He has lots of attorneys," Martin said she told Carroll. "He would bury her." She said she now regrets giving Carroll that advice. "I am not proud of that," Martin said.

As for the claim itself, Martin said, "I believed it then, and I believe it today."

Carroll is expected to finish presenting her case later Thursday. Closing arguments are scheduled to take place Monday.