Trump Jury Hears His Taped Denial on Carroll Assault

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump denied sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll in a video deposition that was played for jurors in a New York trial of her civil battery lawsuit against him, the closest they’ll get to his first-hand response to the claim after he decided not to testify in person.

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“It didn’t happen,” Trump said under oath in the October recording, which was shown to the jury of six men and three women on Thursday. He called the lawsuit a “hoax” and repeatedly said Carroll wasn’t his “type.”

In the video, Trump can be seen sitting at a table as Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan asks him about Carroll’s claim that he assaulted her in a sixth-floor dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1996. The recording was played on the last day of testimony in the trial.

Read More: Trump Defended ‘Access Hollywood’ Comments in Carroll Deposition

“She said I did something to her that never took place,” the former president testified. “I know nothing about this nut job.” He went on to insult Kaplan, calling Carroll’s lawyer a “disgrace” and a “political operative.”

Carroll, a former advice columnist with Elle magazine, went public in 2019 with her claim that Trump raped her in a deserted area of the department store after they decided on a whim to browse for lingerie. She sued him last year under a law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on such claims.

On Thursday, Trump responded to the trial while golfing in Ireland, calling Carroll a “disgrace,” the Guardian newspaper reported.

“I’m going to go back, and I’m going to confront this woman,” he told reporters, according to the newspaper.

During the deposition, Trump was shown a black-and-white photograph of himself speaking to Carroll and her then-husband at an event in the 1980s. Trump initially mistook Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples before being corrected. He stood by his claim that he had no recollection of her. Trump said the photo didn’t jog his memory.

“That’s her big claim to fame — that she shook my hand at a celebrity event,” Trump said of Carroll.

In the deposition, Trump claimed inaccurately that Carroll had publicly said she thought rape was “sexy.” He was referring to Carroll’s appearance on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show in which she lamented that rape was considered by some people to be sexy.

“I believe she said rape is sexy,” Trump said.

“Isn’t it true that she said that’s a view that many other people hold?” Kaplan asked.

“I don’t know,” Trump said. “I believe she said rape is sexy, or something to that effect.”

Read More: Trump Accuser Gives Jury Graphic Testimony of Rape He Denies

Trump was also asked under oath about an allegation by another woman who accused him of assault, Jessica Leeds. She testified Trump assaulted her while they sat in the first-class section of a flight to New York in 1979. Trump said Leeds also wasn’t his “type” before lashing out at Carroll’s lawyer.

“You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either,” Trump said to Kaplan during the deposition. “I would not under any circumstances have any interest in you.”

‘Orange Crush’

The jury also heard from the last witness in the case, Carroll’s friend Carol Martin. She testified that Carroll told her about the alleged assault a few days after it happened, during a visit to her home.

“I was completely floored,” Martin said, adding later that she advised her friend against going to the police.

“At some point I just volunteered that I didn’t think she should do anything because it was Donald Trump and he had a lot of attorneys and I thought he would bury her,” Martin said.

On cross-examination, Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina confronted Martin with a series of text messages and emails she sent after Trump’s 2016 election to demonstrate her extreme dislike for the defendant, referring to him as “Orange Crush” and the “enemy.”

In one email, Martin criticized Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump taking his seat at a G-20 meeting of world leaders, calling her one of Trump’s “junior grifters” who was “sashaying into meetings with world leaders.”

Martin defended the messages at one point, saying they were a common reaction among her friends who were dismayed by Trump’s handling of the country at the time.

But Martin’s communications, which were collected as part of the litigation, also showed her criticizing Carroll’s handling of the aftermath of her allegations, saying in a text to another friend that Carroll was “loving the adulation” and was “in too deep.”

The case is Carroll v. Trump, 22-cv-10016, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

(Updates with testimony from Carroll’s friend)

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