Trump testified E Jean Carroll was ‘nut job’ who said she enjoyed being sexually assaulted

Donald Trump called the writer E Jean Carroll a “nut job” in video testimony last year and falsely claimed she had enjoyed being sexually assaulted – prompting her lawyer to ask if he was admitting he had raped her, according to freshly unsealed testimony.

Questioned for a lawsuit, Trump, the former US president, angrily hurled insults and threatened to sue the columnist who accused him of raping her in the New York upscale department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s, according to excerpts of his videotaped testimony. The tapes were recorded last October and unsealed by a court on Friday.

The New York court on Friday also rejected as “absurd” Trump’s attempt to have dismissed the two lawsuits against him by Carroll, alleging rape and libel. An April trial is planned.

“She said that I did something to her that never took place. There was no anything. I know nothing about this nut job,” he said, according to the transcript of the October testimony.

The excerpts reveal a contentious battle in the civil case, between Trump and Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, who questioned him as Trump called Carroll, a former longtime Elle magazine columnist, the perpetrator of “a complete scam.”

He accused her of describing the alleged rape as she “was promoting a really crummy book”.

Trump added: “I will sue her after this is over, and that’s the thing I really look forward to doing. And I’ll sue you too,” he told Kaplan.

Trump said he knew it wasn’t “politically correct” to say “she’s not my type” when he previously responded to claims, shortly after Carroll’s 2019 book was published. The writer alleged she was attacked by Trump in a dressing room after they had a chance meeting in the store and she agreed to help him pick out lingerie for a friend.

“But I’ll say it anyway,” he said. “She’s accusing me of rape, a woman that I have no idea who she is. It came out of the blue. She’s accusing me of raping her, the worst thing you can do, the worst charge.”

Trump called Carroll “sick, mentally sick”. And he mischaracterized an interview Carroll had given on CNN, falsely claiming she had talked about enjoying being sexually assaulted. “She actually indicated that she loved it. OK? She loved it until commercial break,” Trump said. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”

Kaplan then tried to elicit from Trump that he had raped her client.

“So, sir, I just want to confirm: it’s your testimony that E Jean Carroll said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you?”

Trump answered: “Well, based on her interview with [CNN’s] Anderson Cooper, I believe that’s what took place. And we can define that … I think she said that rape was sexy – which it’s not, by the way.”

What Carroll had described is that she prefers to to use the word fight, not rape because some other people “think rape is sexy”.

Also on Friday, Trump’s real estate business empire, the Trump Organization, was hit with the largest allowable fine of $1.6m after being convicted of tax fraud, another in his long string of serious legal troubles, from Georgia to New York.