Trump will not testify in the trial against him for defamation and rape

Former US President Donald Trump will not testify in the trial against him in New York for the alleged defamation and rape of the writer E. Jean Carroll, according to what the accused’s lawyer said on Tuesday. At the end of today’s hearing, attorney Joe Tacopina told Judge Lewis Kaplan that he would call only one witness, an expert witness, and later confirmed that Trump would not appear at the trial as a witness, to which the judge replied that it was “his decision.”

Previously, the jury heard from Lisa Birnbach, a friend to whom Carroll allegedly disclosed the rape that took place in the mid-1990s, as well as a woman who accused the millionaire of groping her during a 1979 flight. “I’m here because a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, who was a good person, told me about something terrible that happened to her and as a result she lost her job and her life became very, very difficult.” said Birnbach, also a writer and journalist, according to The New York Times.

“I want the world to know that she is telling the truth,” said Birnbach, who testified after Carroll’s two days of testimony, in which she reaffirmed that Trump allegedly raped her in a dressing room at luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman. “Lisa, you won’t believe what happened to me,” she recalled Carroll, who was “panting, hyperventilating, emotional,” telling her..

He also indicated that he thought it was “a little crazy” that she went to the underwear department with Trump, but continued to listen to her. Birnbach claimed that Carroll repeatedly told her, “He pulled my socks down, he pulled my socks down, it was almost like I couldn’t believe it,” and she described how Trump penetrated him with his penis, after which the friend suggested that go to the police. However, he added, the complainant preferred not to go to the authoritieshe asked him not to tell anyone what he confessed to him and they did not talk about it again until 2019.

One of Trump’s lawyers, W. Perry Brandt, focused on the political leanings of Birnbach, who is a Democrat, and also confronted her about statements she made about Trump on a podcast she hosted from 2018 to 2021. Brandt read transcripts in which Birnbach referred to Trump as “an infection, like herpes, that we can’t get rid of”“agent of Vladimir Putin” and “narcissistic sociopath”, which Carroll’s defense objected to.

Jessica Leeds (81), who during the 2016 election campaign for the first time denounced that Trump groped her during a flight to New York in 1979, was also sitting in the witness chair, and today she confirmed her accusation. “We were sitting there and suddenly Trump decided to kiss and grope me”, indicated. “He was trying to kiss me and he was trying to bring me to him. He was grabbing my chest. It’s like I have 40 trillion hands,” said the woman, reports the New York Post.