- Donald Trump was deposed for a rape and defamation lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll.
- He denied the rape and defended his comments in the “Access Hollywood” tape.
- The 48-minute video was shown to jurors in court this week. Watch it below.
E. Jean Carroll’s legal team has released 48 minutes of Donald Trump’s deposition, which was shown to jurors this week at his ongoing rape trial.
The video, which is a collection of segments from a much longer deposition, was entered into evidence and shown in Manhattan federal court, where Trump faces civil allegations of rape and defamation.
Carroll’s legal team distributed the video to journalists on Friday after a group of media organizations, including Insider, indicated they would ask the judge overseeing the case to order its publication.
The ex-president appears low-energy in most of the deposition, speaking in glum tones as he denied having ever met Carroll, who accused him of rape, and later of defaming her when he called her a liar.
Under oath, Trump denied the rape
In response to deposition questions by Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan, Trump continued to deny raping Carroll, as she alleged, and called her “mentally sick” and “not my type.” Yet when he’s shown a photo of him meeting her at an event in 1987 — around 17 minutes into the video posted above — he mixes her up with his then-wife at the time.
“It’s Marla,” Trump said when shown the photo, pointing to Carroll. “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife.”
Alina Habba, Trump’s attorney in the deposition, corrected him.
“No, that’s Carroll,” Habba said.
“It’s very blurry,” Trump responded.
Trump sat for the deposition in Trump Tower on October 19. Transcripts of some portions were already published in legal filings in January.
Carroll, a former longtime Elle magazine columnist and talk show host, alleges Trump raped her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan sometime in the spring of 1996. The two recognized each other, she said, and she agreed to help him shop for a gift for a woman. The two went to the store’s lingerie section and joked about Trump wearing a lacy bodysuit, according to Carroll.
According to Carroll, the two walked into a dressing room, where Trump pinned her to the wall and raped her. Over the next day, she told two of her friends about the incident, both of whom testified at the trial this week. The three women kept the story secret until Carroll went public with her claims in 2019, at which point Trump denied having ever met her and called her a liar political operative.
In the deposition, Trump said he seldom purchased gifts for women he dated and denied that he publicly dated other women while married to Maples. The billionaire said he doesn’t remember ever shopping at Bergdorf Goodman, the luxury department store a block away from Trump Tower. In other parts of the deposition, he said he went there “very rarely.”
Trump also repeated his claim that Carroll was not his “type.”
“I say this with as much respect as I can, she’s not my type,” Trump said. “Not my type in any way, shape, or form.”
Trump said the same of Kaplan, who was deposing him.
“You would not be my choice, either,” Trump said. “I hope you’re not insulted. I’m being honest.”
His voice rose to anger as he denied raping Carroll, and argued the allegations were part of a political conspiracy.
“She’s accusing me of rape — of raping her. It’s not true,” he told Kaplan. “An you know it’s not true, too — you’re a political operative. You’re a disgrace.”
Trump said a ‘star’ is permitted grab women by genitals
During the deposition, Trump was shown the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape where, in 2005, he bragged to TV personality Billy Bush about grabbing women by the genitals.
He sat stony-faced as it played. Trump defended his words as “locker room talk” and said his remarks about women allowing themselves to be grabbed by anyone who’s a “star” was accurate. He said that he personally qualified as a “star.”
“If you look over the last million years, that’s largely true,” Trump said. “Unfortunately or fortunately.”
Kaplan also asked Trump about his claim on social media that Carroll said he “swooned” her. Trump did not appear to know what the word meant, saying it was a substitute for “an act that she said happened — which didn’t happen — and it’s nicer than the word that starts with F.”
Trump appeared to mix up various timeframes throughout the deposition video shown to jurors.
He said he wasn’t sure about the dates of some of his marriages. He also said that a “very beautiful” article about him by former People magazine journalist Natasha Stoynoff was published “months” before she accused him of raping her while she reported on it, when it was actually published more than a decade earlier. Asked when he married Melania Trump, his third and current wife, Trump said he wasn’t sure (it was January 2005).
Trump has sat for several depositions as part of legal challenges since he left the presidency in 2021. The one he took for Carroll’s case is the first to be made public. It is also the first time he has personally gone to trial in a legal case. Others have either been dismissed or settled before they had gone to trial, or have been against his company but not him as an individual.
Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina has said Trump will not testify in the Carroll trial, and rested the defense case on Thursday afternoon without bringing any witnesses. The judge gave Trump’s legal team until 5 p.m. Sunday to file a motion asking to reopen the case if Trump changes his mind.
If Trump doesn’t appear — as he hasn’t during the entire trial — closing arguments are scheduled for Monday, with jury deliberations to begin on Tuesday morning.
Source: I N S I D E R
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