E Jean Carroll’s New York defamation trial against Donald Trump resumed on Thursday with the ex-president’s lawyer trying to discredit her on cross-examination with a bizarre dialectic about genitals and by intimating that she has loose morals.
“Did you ever post any tweets that could be considered sexually explicit?” Alina Habba, Trump’s lead attorney, asked.
Carroll’s team objected. Presiding judge Lewis Kaplan sustained the objection.
As Habba hammered on about the sexual commentary on Carroll’s social media accounts (the former Elle columnist has written about sex and relationships for years), questioning took a turn for the absurd.
“Ms Carroll, what does this say: ‘What CAN be done about the penis? It gets large when you want it small, and stays small when you want it large,’” Habba asked, showing a 2013 tweet. “Those were your words, correct?”
“Yes,” Carroll said.
“And you posted them on a public social media account?”
“Yes.”
“And you left that on your Twitter account as we stand here today, correct?”
Carroll answered in the affirmative.
Pressed to explain the tweet, Carroll said: “It’s a philosophical question.”
“Sometimes a woman doesn’t feel like making love and the man wants to,” Carroll explained, adding that sometimes it’s the reverse.
“You discussed penises?” Habba said.
Carroll said: “Yes.”
Carroll took the stand on Wednesday in the Manhattan federal court trial, which will determine financial penalties against the former US president over his denials of her rape allegation against him in 2019.
“I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me, and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened,” Carroll told jurors. “He lied, and it shattered my reputation.”
Trump was present for Carroll’s opening testimony Wednesday and his lack of courtroom decorum quickly drew the attention of her team – and prompted a stern warning from judge Kaplan.
“Mr Trump has been sitting at the back table and has been loudly saying things throughout Ms Carroll’s testimony,” Shawn Crowley, one of Carroll’s attorneys, said.
“It’s loud enough for us to hear it,” Crowley stated, so “I imagine it’s loud enough for the jury to hear it.”
Before proceedings resumed after the break, Kaplan warned: “I’m just going to ask Mr Trump to take special care to keep his voice down when conferring with counsel, so that the jury does not overhear.”
Trump did not abide by Kaplan’s instruction.
“The defendant has been making statements again [that] we can hear at counsel table,” Crowley told the judge right before the lunch break.
“He said it is a ‘witch-hunt’, it really is a con-job.”
“Mr Trump has the right to be present here. That right can be forfeited, and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive, which is what has been reported to me, and if he disregards court orders,” Kaplan said.
“Mr Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial … I understand you are probably very eager for me to do that.”
“I would love it, I would love it,” Trump responded.
“I know you would, you just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently,” Kaplan said.
This week’s proceedings are the second trial involving Carroll’s claims against Trump. When Carroll initially sued him in 2019, the civil suit involved his denials of her sexual assault allegation, which was made public when New York magazine excerpted her then forthcoming book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.
Carroll could not sue Trump over the sexual assault because her claim was barred by the statute of limitations. In 2022, New York state’s Adult Survivors Act provided adult victims of sexual misconduct a one-year window to file suit against alleged abusers for incidents outside this statute of limitations; Carroll did so.
That lawsuit went to trial last spring and in May, jurors found the former US president liable of sexual abuse and defamation, awarding her $5m in damages.
Judge Kaplan ruled the key facts in that case would be accepted as true in this second trial, so Trump cannot relitigate Carroll’s rape or defamation claim.
Carroll’s direct testimony detailed how Trump’s 2019 denials – which took place while he was still president, giving him the world’s most prominent platform – not only destroyed her reputation, but spurred a deluge of online hate and threats against her.
Habba, Trump’s lead attorney, tried in cross-examination to sow doubt over the threats against Carroll, who said she did not report them to police.
On the second day of cross-examination, Habba tried to prove that online backlash resulting from the article was not Trump’s doing, as some people tweeted before his denial. Among those tweets was: “You’re a joke, no one would willingly touch your ugly ass.”
“Wouldn’t you agree that negative tweets are not necessarily tied to President Trump’s statements, Ms Carroll?”
“Some negative tweets are definitely tied to the president’s statement.”
“And why do you think that?”
“Because they follow President Trump and they want to emulate him.”
Habba concluded her cross-examination by suggesting that Carroll had not suffered because of Trump’s comments. Didn’t she have opportunities like having a Substack and TV appearances? Was she making more money? Was she better-known?
“So, your reputation in many ways is better today isn’t it Ms Carroll?”
“No, my status was lowered. I’m partaking in this trial to bring my old reputation and status back.”
“So, you sued Donald Trump to bring your old reputation back?”
“Yeah.”
Ashlee Humphreys, a Northwestern University marketing professor, took the witness stand after Carroll’s testimony wrapped. Humphreys’ testimony could help put a dollar amount on the reputational harm Carroll endured because of Trump’s comments.
Humphreys provided testimony in Carroll’s first trial against Trump, but her presence in this trial could be quite perilous to him.
She testified in two Georgia former election workers’ defamation trial against Trump’s crony, Rudy Giuliani.
Those former election workers won $148.1m in the suit. Giuliani filed for bankruptcy protection following the conclusion of that case.
Humphreys said that she studied how many people Trump’s June 2019 statements reached.
Humphreys estimated that the total number of times Trump’s statements were viewed ranged from some 85.8m to 104.1m.
Humphreys calculated that up to 24.7m of these impressions were associated with likely belief in Trump’s statements. To restore Carroll’s reputation by putting out corrective messaging in relation to the 2019 statements, Humphreys estimated, it could cost from $7.2m to $12.1m.
Crowley, who was questioning Humphreys, asked how a person’s reputation is affected when the same negative claim is repeated – especially by a prominent source.
“In general, repeated claims only strengthen people’s attitudes.”
On cross, Trump attorney Michael T Madaio suggested that the ex-president was not responsible for backlash against Carroll – because supporters were unlikely to believe her anyway.
Were the people most likely receptive to Trump’s denials most likely Trump supporters? Were Trump supporters more likely to believe him? Madaio asked.
“Wouldn’t you think that Trump supporters would have already thought Ms Carroll a liar in her accusations?” he asked. “If they already had an opinion formed on this subject, and they already had an opinion of Ms Carroll, would President Trump have any effect on their opinion?”
