Donald Trump’s rape prosecutor told a court on Thursday how she was met with a “wave of slime” after the former president attacked her on social media.
E. Jean Carroll said that when Trump called her a liar in October 2022, his supporters made her feel “too ugly to live.”
The court was shown tweets from Trump supporters stating that the former president “wouldn’t touch that ugly son of a bitch with (his) d***.”
Trump’s lawyers were scheduled to question her later in the day about the details of the alleged rape.
Under cross-examination, she admitted she couldn’t remember the date and didn’t make her claims about Trump public until 2019 when she was promoting her book.
E. Jean Carroll said Thursday that when Donald Trump called her a liar on social media in October 2022, his supporters made her feel “too ugly to live”
Carroll claims Trump raped her in a department store locker room in the mid-90s and is suing him for battery use
Carroll told the court that after she published her book in 2019, Trump called her a liar in an official statement issued when he was president
Carroll, 79, an advice columnist, claims that Trump raped her circa 1996 in the dressing room of Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store.
She has sued him in civil court in New York for libel and defamation over his comments on her accusations.
Carroll told the court that after she published her book in 2019, Trump called her a liar in an official statement issued when he was president.
In 2022, she was “gaining some ground,” but Trump called her lawsuit a “SCAM” in a lengthy post on Truth Social and again denied it.
Carrol said, “Boom, it knocked me back down.”
She described the subsequent abuse as a “slime wave.” She said, “They were shady comments, very derogatory, repeating what Donald Trump said, I was a liar, I did it for the money, I couldn’t wait for payday, I worked for the Democrats, but most importantly I was too ugly.
“It’s hard to get up in the morning with the message that you’re just too ugly to go on living.”
The court was shown a tweet from a Trump supporter that read, “I’m sure Mr. President wouldn’t touch that ugly bastard with your d***.”
Another tweet called Carroll a “troll” and a “bulls******.”
Carroll said she regretted filing the lawsuit “five times a day” because she continued to receive threats on social media, including that morning when she checked Twitter.
Under cross-examination by Trump attorney Joe Tacopina, Carroll admitted that parts of her story were “difficult to understand” and “weird.”
She said that “status is important” to her and after being fired from her job at Elle magazine in 2019, where she wrote her advice column, she felt “just a different person.”
Trump’s statement calling her Carroll a liar in October 2022
Trump furious this week that the whole thing was fueled by Democratic mega-donor Reid Hoffman, whose nonprofit gave money to Carroll’s defense
Bergdorf Goodman (above) is just a block from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue
Carroll admitted she didn’t make her claims public until that same year when she published her 2019 book What Do We Need Men For? A modest proposal.
Tacopina asked if the book was “your version” of what happened to Trump.
Carroll replied, “Those are the facts.”
The jury was shown a 2019 email that Carroll sent to an editor of New York Magazine that contained an excerpt from the book, including the Trump section.
In it, Carroll said she thought Trump, who was president at the time, was “trying to kill me” as he “poisoned my water” and “polluted my air and boiled my planet.”
The jury was also shown an email Carroll received in 2017 from her friend Carol Martin, a TV journalist, in which Martin called Trump “Orange Crush.”
Martin wrote, “This has got to stop. As soon as we’re both good enough to make plans, we’ll have to do our patriotic duty again.’
Carroll replied, “IT FULL!!! I have something special for you when we meet.’
When asked what she meant, Carroll said she had “no idea” what the special might be.
But the court heard that just two weeks later, she embarked on a road trip that saw her speak to women across America that would form the basis of her book.
Carroll insisted that the word “schedule” had no connotations of evil and that it was the MeToo movement, which began in 2017, that motivated her to write the book, not Trump.
But she admitted that she had never gone to the police in the two decades since the alleged rape.
The jury was shown a 2019 email that Carroll sent to a New York Magazine editor that contained an excerpt from the book, including the part about Trump
Trump was represented by Joe Tacopina, the attorney representing him in the criminal case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney, and five other attorneys
Tacopina asked, “When you were trying to sell your book and get money for your book, you first mentioned the Donald Trump story, is that right?”
Carroll said yes.
Carroll admitted she couldn’t remember when the incident happened and told the jury, “I wish in heaven we could get you a date.”
There was laughter in the courtroom when Tacopina asked about the premise of Carroll’s book that every man in the US should be “done off.”
Carroll said the idea was for them to go to Montana to get “retrained.”
Tacopina asked if she meant “all the men in this country, in this courtroom have to go to Montana to get retrained?”
Carroll said it was satirically written.
Judge Lewis Kaplan told Tacopina the book was a reference to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, a satirical essay published in 1729, and told him to move on.
Tacopina asked why Carroll wasn’t yelling and she said she was “not a yeller.”
Tacopina said, “When you were raped because you’re not a screamer, didn’t you scream?”
Carroll said, “You can’t beat me up for not yelling.”
In protest, Tacopina said he was just “asking questions.”
Carroll replied that people believed that if a woman didn’t scream “you weren’t raped.”
Raising her voice, she said, “I’m telling you, he raped me whether I screamed or not.” She added that she wished she had screamed because “more people would have believed me.”
Trump Attorney Joe Tacopina Asked Why Carroll Didn’t Scream During The Alleged Rape And She Said She Was ‘Not A Screamer’
During another clash, Tacopina asked if Carroll could really have gotten her knee up to Trump’s waist and pushed him away, as she claims while wearing four-inch heels.
Carroll said she could “dance back and forth in three-inch heels.” In a dig at Tacopina, she said, “You work out all the time,” to which he huffed and backed off.
Tacopina said he could ask a question about that, but it would be objected.
Laughter erupted in the courtroom as an excerpt from Carroll’s book was read in which she wrote how she wanted to describe the alleged rape in as “unsexy” terms as possible so as not to “amplify the gonadal glow of his base,” referring to Trump.
The court was shown a 2019 interview Carroll did with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC, where she said she didn’t want to file criminal charges against Trump because she “could handle it” and it only took “three minutes.”
Carroll said she had just seen a news report about migrants being raped at the border and that adding to her suffering seemed “disrespectful” by comparison.
The case is expected to last up to two weeks and it is unclear whether Trump will appear.