Jean Carroll, leaves court in New York. Europa Press Contact Victor Mat | EUROPAPRESS
The defense recalls that Elizabeth Jean Carroll has voted for Democrats “since the 90s” and questioned the date chosen to make her accusations public.
On the second day of Donald Trump’s rape and defamation trial, the defense fired back, questioning the credibility of the prosecutor, a writer and former magazine columnist. Elle Elizabeth Jean Carroll.
The hearing began Thursday when Carroll testified to be cross-examined by the defendant’s defense, a day after she said Trump cornered her in a Manhattan department store dressing room and then raped her. I’m here because Donald Trump raped meand when I wrote about it, he said it never happened,” he said Wednesday. “He lied and ruined my reputation, and I’m here to try to get my life back,” he added.
After the publication of Carroll’s memoirs in 2019, in which he detailed the facts, Trump declared that he did not know the writer and that he was “trying to sell a new book” with his accusations. On the bench in a Manhattan courtroom, Carroll argued that Trump’s comments led to “avalanches” of offensive messages. On Wednesday, before the trial began, Judge Lewis Kaplan had to reprimand the former president for saying hours earlier, via Truth Social, that the lawsuit was a “contrived fraud.”
During Thursday’s questioning, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina focused on the political leanings of Carroll — a Democratic voter “since the ’90s” — and an attempt to discredit her testimony by questioning the date the writer chose to publish her allegations. She replied that she did it in 2019, encouraged by the publication in The New York Times from the accusations against Harvey Weinstein, from which the MeToo movement was born. In addition, he defended that “telling his story” is “a way to change the culture of sexual violence.”
Another defense argument is the lack of physical evidence in a case that happened three decades ago. “It’s one of those ‘he said, she said’ cases,” Judge Kaplan described in his pretrial deliberations.
In subsequent hearings, the jury will hear testimony from two of Carroll’s female friends, with whom she was estranged when the events occurred, and testimony from two other women who claim they were sexually assaulted by Trump. On Wednesday, Carroll’s attorney brought up another sexual assault that the victim described in one of her books, this time at the hands of Les Moonves, CBS network executive, who faces other allegations of violence. When asked by the attorney why he never sued Moonves, Carroll replied, “He didn’t defame me. He didn’t call me a liar. Donald Trump called me a liar.”
Source: La Vozde Galicia
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
