Donald Trump has launched a fresh broadside against his civil trial for rape and defamation, calling the case a disgrace.
The former US president said on Thursday he would probably attend the trial in New York but called it a political attack built on false claims by the accuser, the writer E Jean Carroll.
“I have to go back for a woman that made a false accusation about me and I have a judge who’s extremely hostile,” he told reporters while playing golf at a resort he owns in Doonbeg, County Clare, on the west coast of Ireland. “I’m going to go back, and I’m going to confront this woman. This woman is a disgrace and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen in our country.”
Trump repeated previous assertions that Carroll was a Democrat who invented the story to sell a memoir. “I have no idea who she is; it’s ridiculous. She made a claim, she wrote a book, she made a claim.”
Carroll has accused Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. She is also suing him for defamation after Trump accused Carroll of lying when she went public with her account of the alleged assault in 2019.
Trump claimed the case was an attempt to derail his bid to recapture the White House in 2024, but said that in polls he remained ahead of President Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis, his possible challenger for the Republican nomination. “This is a political attack. This is the only way they think they can win the election because they’re losing.”
Asked if he was confident of winning the election, Trump replied: “I could win it three times.” He accused Biden of incompetence and frailty. After hitting his first drive on the course, Trump said: “You think Biden can do that? I don’t think so. Biden doesn’t hit a 280 right down the middle, does he? Biden can’t hit an 80 down the middle.”
Trump wore a Make America Great Again hat and was accompanied by his son Eric. They are to return to the US on Thursday after a three-day visit to Trump’s golf resorts in Scotland and Ireland.
If Trump is serious about testifying, it would probably have to be on Monday as the last of Carroll’s witnesses are expected to give evidence on Thursday. The court does not sit on Friday and final arguments are scheduled for Monday.
Any such move will not please the judge, Lewis Kaplan, who did not hide his irritation when Trump’s legal team prevaricated last week about whether the former president would attend the trial.
Meanwhile, the jury is expected to continue hearing Trump’s recorded deposition on the rape allegation.
The jurors heard the former president ridicule the accusation in an excerpt played to the court before the session ended on Wednesday.
“It’s the most ridiculous, disgusting story. It’s just made up,” he said.
The former president also said he could not remember when he was married to his various wives, but could find out. Asked if he had affairs while married, Trump replied: “I don’t know.”
The jury had already been shown the Access Hollywood tape of Trump boasting about kissing and groping women without their consent. They are expected to see it again but this time as part of the former president’s deposition, in which he is asked to explain it. The tape was made public shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
The jury was shown the tape for the first time on Wednesday during the testimony of Natasha Stoynoff, a People magazine reporter, who said she was pinned against a wall and forcibly kissed by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in 2005 when she went to write an article about the first anniversary of his marriage to Melania Trump.
Stoynoff said she tried to push Trump away. “He came toward me again and I tried to shove him again. He was kissing me. He was against me,” she said.
Stoynoff said she tried to cry out but didn’t. “I didn’t say words. I couldn’t. I tried,” she said.
Trump backed off when his butler walked into the room, she said. Stoynoff said that Trump spoke to her later and suggested that sex with him would be the “best ever”.
“He said, you do know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?”
Stoynoff said she was “ashamed and humiliated by the attack” and asked her boss to remove her from writing about Trump.
Among the final witnesses is Carol Martin, who is expected to testify that Carroll told her about the alleged assault shortly after it occurred. Earlier this week, another close friend of Carroll’s, Lisa Birnbach, testified that Carroll called “breathless, hyperventilating, emotional” within minutes of Trump allegedly raping her.
Birnbach, a magazine writer and editor, said Carroll described Trump pinning her to a changing room wall, pulling down her tights and forcing first his fingers and then his penis into her vagina.
Birnbach said she told Carroll: “E Jean, he raped you. You should go to the police.”
In a separate case, a judge in New York threw out the former president’s 2021 lawsuit accusing New York Times reporters of an “insidious plot” to obtain his tax records.
