It’s been less than a year since writer E. Jean Carroll managed to convince a jury that former President Donald Trump sexually abused her decades ago. Today she will appear before the court again, to testify in the second civil trial against Mr. Trump, this time to prove how Mr. Trump’s verbal attacks have affected her life.
The former President has rejected all the accusations raised by the writer. Because the first jury found Mr. Trump guilty of sexually abusing Ms. Carroll in the 1990s and then of defaming her in 2022, the new trial relates only to the damages he will have to pay the writer for verbal attacks on her, made when Mr. Trump was president. The jury may also decide that Mr. Trump may not pay anything.
Mr. Trump, who during this period has appeared from court to court in the middle of a presidential election campaign, took part in the process of selecting the jury in Manhattan on Tuesday. He then left for a rally in New Hampshire.
In a social media post on Tuesday, he wrote that the case was nothing more than “a fabricated political lie” that had provided his accuser with money and fame.
“I am the only one harmed by this extortion attempt,” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.
The writer Carroll has said that Mr. Trump has caused her great harm. According to her, Mr Trump raped her in a dressing room during a chance encounter between them at a luxury store in 1996, and when she went public with the incident in a memoir published in 2019, he disputed the allegations, saying cast doubt on her words, motives and even her mental state.
“He called me a liar repeatedly and it really ruined my reputation. I’m a journalist. The only thing I have to have is the trust of the readers. They don’t trust me anymore,” she said during testimony in April at the trial of seen.
According to Ms. Carroll, because of Mr. Trump’s response to her accusations, she has lost millions of readers as well as her job at Elle magazine, where for more than a quarter of a century she wrote an advice column titled “Ask E. Jean”. But representatives of the magazine say that her contract was not renewed for other reasons, unrelated to the case. One of Ms. Carroll’s lawyers, Shawn Crowley, said in her opening statement in court that the writer has received violent threats from Mr. Trump’s supporters.
Mr Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, countered by saying Ms Carroll was seeking to hold Mr Trump accountable for “several false tweets made by fake accounts”. In his comments to Ms Carroll he was “simply defending himself” she said.
Mr. Trump says that nothing has ever happened between him and the writer, and that he has never even met her. But a photo taken during a party in 1987 shows Mr Trump and Ms Carroll, accompanied by their ex-husbands. Mr Trump says it was a random photo that “shouldn’t count”.
Mr Trump did not attend the previous trial on the matter which took place in May last year. At that time the jury reached a verdict that he had sexually abused and defamed Ms. Carroll, forcing the former president to pay her $5 million in damages. However, Ms Carroll says she was unable to substantiate her claims that Mr Trump had raped her. Ms. Carroll is now seeking at least $10 million in damages for defamation.