Donald Trump’s lawyers entered court for yet another legal showdown in New York this week as the former president faces an accusation of rape from author E Jean Carroll.
It’s part of a long-brewing fight that has vexed the president for nearly a half decade, almost as long as the Stormy Daniels controversy which earlier this month resulted in Mr Trump being hit with 34 criminal counts by Manhattan prosecutors.
Ms Carroll alleges that the former president, then a business mogul known around New York, raped her in the fitting room of a department store in 1995 or 1996. According to news reports, she plans to corroborate her story with the testimony of individuals who will say that Ms Carroll told them shortly after the alleged attack, as well as testimony from other women who will reportedly testify about unwanted sexual advances from Mr Trump.
The former president has denied Ms Carroll’s claims on several occasions, while resorting to his trademark strategy of insulting his perceived enemies in an attempt to disparage their credibility. But, in general, he has avoided addressing the matter — which involves a more unsavoury and politically damaging allegation — to the extent that he has addressed other scandals, including the Daniels matter.
Let’s take a look at the few times he has addressed it, and what was said:
‘She’s not my type’
In June of 2019, days after Ms Carroll came forward with her allegations in a magazine article, Mr Trump responded during an interview with two reporters from The Hill.
Speaking in the Oval Office, then-President Trump laid into Ms Carroll’s physical appearance and accused her of “totally lying” about the supposed encounter. He also claimed to have never met her.
“I don’t know anything about her,” he told journalists Saagar Enjeti and Jordan Fabian. “I know nothing about this woman. I know nothing about her. She is — it’s just a terrible thing that people can make statements like that.”
The deposition
Later that year, Mr Trump would sit down for a deposition in a defamation case brought by Ms Carroll.
During his testimony, Mr Trump went even further than his previous comments, claiming not only that he had never met Ms Carroll, but that she herself had claimed in a CNN interview to have found the idea of rape “sexy”.
“She said that I did something to her that never took place. There was no anything. I know nothing about this nut job,” said Mr Trump at the time, calling his accuser “mentally sick”.
To her attorney, he continued: “I will sue her after this is over, and that’s the thing I really look forward to doing. And I’ll sue you too.”
He then added, “She actually indicated that she loved it. OK? She loved it until commercial break,” Trump said. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”
That comment prompted a question from Ms Carroll’s attorney regarding whether he had just admitted that the alleged incident occurred; Mr Trump demurred.
“Well, based on her interview with Anderson Cooper, I believe that’s what took place. And we can define that … I think she said that rape was sexy, which it’s not, by the way.”
But that wasn’t the only moment during the November 2019 deposition that raised a few eyebrows.
In one moment during his testimony, Mr Trump was shown a picture which included Ms Carroll — and, perhaps not shockingly, despite claiming she was “not [his] type” actually mistook her for his ex-wife, Marla Maples.
It prompted a revealing exchange between the president and the attorney for Ms Carroll, as Mr Trump declared: “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife.”
“No, that’s Carroll,” said the author’s attorney.
In 2022, New York passed the Adult Survivors Act allowing adult sexual assault survivors one year to sue their alleged abusers. Ms Carroll then filed a second lawsuit against Mr Trump for rape and for additional alleged defamatory statements made by him in October 2022 when he called her a “complete con job”. A trial for this second case began on 25 April. The original lawsuit has not yet been scheduled to go to trial.
In a court filing earlier this year, Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that the central issue in both cases is whether Mr Trump raped Ms Carroll.
The Truth Social post
On Wednesday 26 April, Mr Trump once again tore into his accuser, this time on social media.
“The E. Jean Carroll case, Ms. Bergdorf Goodman, is a made up SCAM. Her lawyer is a political operative, financed by a big political donor that they said didn’t exist, only to get caught lying about that,” he wrote.
He also added, in one of the most surreal quotes to emanate from an American president: “She didn’t scream? There are no witnesses? Nobody saw this? She never made a police complaint? If I was seen there with a woman-BIG PRESS. SCAM!”
