Donald Trump used his platform while he was US president to try to wreck E Jean Carroll’s name after she accused him of rape, her lawyer argued in a New York court on Tuesday, adding that Trump had also emboldened hardline followers to hurl smears and threats at her.
“He had the biggest microphone on the planet … He used it to tear her reputation to shreds – to defame her,” Shawn Crowley, one of Carroll’s attorneys, said during opening statements in the former Elle columnist’s second defamation trial against Trump, which opened in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday afternoon.
