According to NBC News, during the closing arguments of E. Jean Carroll’s civil trial against former President Donald Trump for allegedly raping her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s, her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, accused Trump of not showing up because he “knows what he did.” Speaking to the jury, Kaplan played a video of Trump’s October deposition in the case where he identified a photo of Carroll from the late 1980s as a picture of his second wife, Marla Maples. Kaplan pointed out that Carroll was “exactly his type” and accused Trump of saying that Carroll was not attractive enough to sexually assault.
Kaplan also played a portion of the Access Hollywood tape where Trump was heard saying he kisses and gropes women without their consent because “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
She then played a portion of the deposition where she asked Trump about whether his comment about stars was true. Trump replied that it had been “largely true,” and Kaplan accused him of using the word “fortunately” to describe sexual assault.
Carroll is suing Trump for battery and defamation, and Trump denies the allegations. His lawyers did not present any witnesses, and he did not testify in the case. Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, told the jury that Trump denied attacking Carroll under oath during his deposition and argued that Carroll’s vagueness about the timing of the alleged attack made it difficult for his client to defend himself.
He also suggested that Carroll was inspired by a 2012 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that mentioned a rape fantasy in a dressing room in the lingerie department at Bergdorf Goodman.
“In other words, she wasn’t attractive enough to sexually assault.“He is telling you, in his own words, his modus operandi, his M.O.,
Well, that’s what — if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately
In her closing, Kaplan noted that two friends who testified that Carroll told them about the attack at the time, Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin, had supported her client’s story under oath.
She also mentioned two other women, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, who testified that Trump had groped them on an airplane in the 1970s and forced Stoynoff against a wall and started kissing her at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2005. Trump denied those allegations as well.
Kaplan did not ask for a specific amount of money from the jury and said that for Carroll, the trial was “not about the money” but “about getting her name back.”
