“Donald Trump raped me” – The Morning Call

JENNIFER PELTZ and MICHAEL R. SISAK (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — At first, she thought helping Donald Trump buy a gift of women’s lingerie at a high-end department store was simply a “funny New York thing.”

According to E. Gene Carroll, businessmen of the time, she wrote, “saturday nights,” even when they moved her into the locker room to boldly try on each other to try on see-through bodysuits. I imagined something like a sketch of “Night Live”.

But within minutes, “My whole reason for being alive in the moment was to get out of that room,” Carroll testified at Wednesday’s rape trial.

“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me. When I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation.” .

From afar, Trump reiterated his claims that Carroll’s 1996 rape allegations were complete fiction, writing on his social media sites that the case was “a hoax.”

“This is a hoax – a witch hunt!” Trump wrote on the Truth Social platform. His comments prompted the judge to warn Trump’s lawyers that he could bring himself into more legal trouble.

Trump has not attended the trial so far, but his lawyer said Tuesday that he could still decide to testify.

The trial comes as Trump seeks the Republican presidential nomination again and faces unrelated criminal charges, including payments made to silence a porn actor who said he had a sexual relationship. It took place several weeks after he pleaded not guilty.

Carroll, 79, testified that he crossed paths with Trump at the revolving door of Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified Thursday night in the spring of 1996. Trump was a New York real estate mogul and social figure.

She asked her advice on how he would choose gifts for women. thought, she said.

She testified that she suggested a hat, but he turned to lingerie and soon they joked about bodysuits. Even when I pushed her, she laughed and went along.

But then, she alleges, Trump forced his mouth into his own mouth, pulled down his tights, tucked his own hands in, and pushed his own penis into himself.

She finally got him to his knees and fled, saying she blamed herself for years.

“I always remember how I ended up in that situation,” she said, raising her voice.

She said that for decades, she feared Trump would retaliate, because she “thought it was my fault,” and because she thought many blamed what happened to rape victims. So I didn’t tell anyone except my two friends.

The alleged attacks came long before the #MeToo movement was forced to take into account how victims of sexual assault are treated by law enforcement and viewed in general. Carol says #MeToo helped her decide to come forward in 2019.

Trump, 76, says he wasn’t in the store with Carol and had no idea who she was when she first aired the story publicly in her 2019 memoir and accompanying magazine excerpt. I didn’t get it.

As the courtroom was about to begin Wednesday, Trump vented his feelings about it on Truth Social.

Among his other remarks, he called Carroll’s attorney a “political operative” and alluded to the DNA issue, which Judge Louis A. Kaplan ruled was not part of the case.

Carroll’s attorneys filed his complaint against Kaplan in a lawsuit that included allegations that Trump had previously defamed her by publicly calling her case a “hoax,” a “fraud,” a “lie,” and a “outright fraud.” He was not satisfied.

“What seems to be the case is that your client is basically trying to speak to an unquoted public. It looks like an official statement,” he called it.

Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said jurors were told not to follow news or online comments about the case. said to do.

“I wish you more success.

Carroll’s federal lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and retraction of the alleged defamatory comments.

The lawsuit was filed under a New York state law that temporarily allows decades-old sexual abuse claims to be brought to civil court. She never pursued criminal charges.

The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward, as Carroll did.