Trump described E Jean Carroll rape accusation as ‘ridiculous’, jury hears

Donald Trump has described the accusation he raped the advice columnist E Jean Carroll as “ridiculous” in a deposition played to a New York jury on Wednesday.

The former president also said he could not remember when he was married to his various wives, but could find out. Asked if he had affairs while married, Trump said: “I don’t know.”

Trump has declined to appear in person to testify at the civil trial of Carroll’s claim that he raped her in a New York department store changing room. She is also suing him for defamation after Trump accused Carroll of lying when she went public with her account of the alleged assault in 2019.

But the jury was played part of an hours-long deposition he gave before the case came to court. In it, Trump said he went “very rarely” to Bergdorf Goodman department store, where Carroll claims he raped her in a dressing room. He angrily rejected the allegation he assaulted the advice columnist.

“It’s the most ridiculous, disgusting story. It’s just made up,” he said.

The jury heard only part of the deposition before the judge ended the hearing for the day. The rest will be played on Thursday.

Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, said the defence will not be calling any witnesses.

Earlier, the jury heard from Natasha Stoynoff, a People magazine reporter, who said she was pinned against a wall and forcibly kissed by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in 2005 when she went to write an article about the first anniversary of his marriage to Ivanka Trump.

Stoynoff said she tried to push Trump away. “He came toward me again and I tried to shove him again. He was kissing me. He was against me,” she said.

Stoynoff said she tried to cry out but didn’t. “I didn’t say words. I couldn’t. I tried,” she said.

Trump backed off when his butler walked into the room.

Stoynoff said that Trump spoke to her later and suggested that sex with him would be the “best ever”.

“He said: ‘You do know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?’” Stoynoff said. She said she was “ashamed and humiliated by the attack” and asked her boss to remove her from writing about Trump.

The jury was then played played the so-called Access Hollywood tape of Trump boasting about kissing and groping women without their consent. “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women. I just start kissing them – it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” Trump says on that tape in 2005. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.”

Earlier in the day, a leading clinical psychologist told the trial that Carroll was “doubled over with stomach pain” as she recalled the alleged rape.

Dr Leslie Lebowitz said Carroll exhibits aspects of post traumatic stress disorder, including physical pain, without fitting the full clinical diagnosis as a result of the alleged assault in 1996.

“She does have symptoms that fit into the rubric of PTSD,” said Lebowitz.

Lebowitz, who interviewed Carroll for about 20 hours, said the advice columnist experiences intrusive physical symptoms of the alleged attack. These included “squirming in her seat” as she recounted the experience of Trump’s fingers in her vagina.

These symptoms worsened, she said, when Trump ran for the White House and was in the news, but diminished again in time.

The psychologist concluded Carroll has been harmed in three main ways. These include suffering from “painful intrusive memories” for many years and a “diminishment” in how she thinks and feels about herself. But Lebowitz said that perhaps the most prominent effect was Carroll “manifests avoidance syndromes” that have stopped her having a romantic life.

“Following her encounter with Mr Trump she began to shut down in the presence of eligible men,” said Lebowitz. “She’s avoiding anything that reminds her of the threat.”

The psychologist said Carroll described the behavior as like a metal shutter pulled down over a store front.

Carroll testified earlier in the trial that she stopped having sex after the alleged assault at the age of 53.

“If I meet a man who is a possibility, it’s impossible for me to even look at him and smile,” she said.

Lebowitz described this as typical “avoidance behavior”.

Pressed on why Carroll insisted in a book and in public that she was “not a victim”, was “fine”, and that she had “never suffered” as a result of the attack, the psychologist said that the advice columnist was presenting a particular face to the world.

Lebowitz said Carroll “fiercely identified with being strong” and as a person who “marched on”, and that a public admission of the impact on her would have harmed that.

“Being raped meant to her being the victim, being stupid, being dirty,” she said.

“For most of the years she simply blamed herself for the assault. She thought she had done something stupid.”

Last week, Trump’s lawyer pressed Carroll under cross-examination about why she didn’t scream if she was being raped, and why she had offered differing explanations for doing so. Carroll said a number of factors could all have been at play.

“I’m telling you he raped me whether I screamed or not,” she said last week.

Lebowitz told the trial on Wednesday it was not uncommon for victims of sexual assault to stay silent while they were being attacked. She said Carroll’s brain would have been flooded with stress hormones, which can lead to unexpected behavior.

Lebowitz gave the imaginary example of a woman who “doesn’t scream even if they’re being raped in the stands of the public library even if we imagine they would”.

She said stress hormones also have a major impact on what people remember about a traumatic incident.

Under cross-examination, Lebowitz agreed that she had not applied any behavioral tests to assess if Carroll was lying about the alleged attack.

The trial continues.