Donald Trump faces the bitterest and most personal trial of his legal battles yet in Manhattan Tuesday as advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s claim that he raped her in the 1990s then lied about it finally goes in front of a jury.
Carroll, 79, will go under oath to accuse Trump of forcing himself on her in the dressing rooms of Bergdorf Goodman’s lingerie department, while her lawyers plan to play jurors the infamous “p—ygate” tape, and bring in other women who claim the former president attacked them too.
But Trump’s legal team will launch its own ferocious defense in the civil trial of the rape-and-lies claims, painting Carrol as a liar and an anti-Trump obsessive.
They will highlight that Carroll is suing almost three decades after she says the rape happened, that there are no witnesses – and will try to tell jurors that her lawyers are funded by a liberal billionaire who despises the ex-president.
Both sides have been barred by the judge from speaking out in advance and declined to comment to The Post, but have traded blows since Carroll first made her claim in 2019, prompting Trump to deny raping her and tell The Hill: “She’s not my type.”
Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, said after he was deposed by Carroll’s side for more than five hours last year: “This case is nothing more than a political ploy like many others in the long list of witch hunts against Donald Trump.”
The federal civil trial will play out as Trump surges in polling among Republicans for the presidential primary after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg indicted him on charges of paying porn star Stormy Daniels hush money.
But he has also been criticized by evangelical voters for warning that abortion is a losing issue for the GOP, meaning the effect on Christian voters of hearing claims of rape and sexual assault playing out in court will be closely watched – as will reaction, if any, from his wife Melania, who will be mentioned in the case as nearby during an alleged 2005 sex attack.
It is still not clear if Trump, who has been unsuccessful in his bids to delay the trial and has said that his presence at Manhattan federal court will be a “burden” on New York City, will show up.
Because it is a civil case, he does not have to – and because it is a civil case, only money is at stake.
The jury has to decide if he raped Carroll by the preponderance of evidence, not beyond reasonable doubt.
Carroll, 79, first made the rape accusation in a 2019 book, which was excerpted in “New York” magazine.
Trump accused her when he was deposed of being the perpetrator of “a complete scam” to promote her “really crummy book” in a deposition, according to court filings. “I will sue her after this is over,” he said.
Carroll, who wrote the long-running “Ask E. Jean” advice column for Elle magazine between 1993 and 2019, and also had her own show on America’s Talking, the predecessor to MSNBC, claims she bumped into Trump in 1995 or early 1996 at Bergdorf’s.
Trump, who was married to Marla Maples at the time, asked her to help him choose a gift for a “girl.”
The two went to the lingerie department, where Trump picked out a bodysuit.
Then they went to a dressing room, because Caroll says, she wanted to get him to try it on.
“The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly and puts his mouth against my lips,” writes Carroll in her 2019 book, “What Do We Need Men for? A Modest Proposal.”
“He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.”
Carroll said she kept the black Donna Karan coat dress that she was wearing during the alleged incident, unwashed, for decades.
It was tested by a lab, which reported finding a mix of four people’s DNA on the sleeve, one of which belongs to a man, according to a lab report.
Carroll’s lawyers had sought Trump’s DNA for three years.
After initially refusing to provide a DNA sample, Trump’s lawyers switched tactics at the very last minute, saying they would provide one if Carroll’s lawyers turned over the full DNA analysis on the dress.
The judge, Lewis Kaplan, ruled that out, leaving the DNA un-matched.
That was not the only blow to Trump’s side.
They also lost a bid to ban jurors from hearing the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which the then-“Apprentice” host tells Billy Bush: “When you’re famous, you can do anything… grab ’em by the p—y.'”
And Carroll’s side will parade other seamy claims of sexual assault by Trump from People magazine journalist Natasha Stoynoff and retired businesswoman Jessica Leeds, 81.
Leeds said that she was seated beside Trump on a flight from Texas to New York in 1979. After they finished eating their airline meal, Trump allegedly groped her and tried to assault her, she said.
Stoynoff alleged in an article for People published five days after the ‘P—ygate’ tape was leaked that Trump assaulted her while she was writing a story about him and his family at Mar-a-Lago in 2005 by luring her to a private room while pregnant wife Melania was changing clothes for a photo shoot.
Carroll interviewed both women for The Atlantic magazine in the run-up to the 2020 election, then added them to the witness list.
While the trial will re-litigate claims that Trump preys on women, an evangelical backer of Trump said it would not affect support for him.
Dallas, Texas, megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress told The Post: “All of these questions have been litigated over and over again — they were litigated in 2016 and again in 2020 — and in both cases, evangelicals voted for Trump by a whopping 80 percent. And I believe they will do so when he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024.
“Most evangelicals believe Trump is the most pro-life, pro-religious liberty, pro-Israel president in the history of our country. And that’s why he is winning the evangelical vote.”
The trial also has a bitter legal subplot, with Trump attacking Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, a prominent women’s rights advocate.
During his October deposition at Mar-a-Lago, the former president called her a “political operative” and “a disgrace,” and said: “I’ll sue you too.”
Kaplan – who is not related to Judge Kaplan – was chairwoman of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit that helped women fight sexual abuse, but resigned in 2021 after being accused of trying to discredit one of the women who accused disgraced New York governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment.
One of the other members of the legal team, Shawn Crowley, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner in Kaplan’s firm Hecker, represented the Democratic National Committee in 2016 “in connection with a criminal investigation relating to the 2016 presidential election, as well as a defamation and civil RICO suit brought by former president Donald J. Trump,” according to her firm’s biography.
Intriguingly, Crowley was Judge Kaplan’s former law clerk. The Post can reveal that the judge disclosed in 2022 that he had “co-officiated (with another judge) at the marriage of Ms Crowley approximately seven years ago.”
The defense preparation included its own test trial in a Manhattan hotel with 27 mock jurors hired through social media ads. Two-thirds backed Carroll, according to the Daily Mail. That would be a PR defeat for Trump, but a legal victory: for Carroll to win the verdict in her favor must be unanimous.
In addition to the Carroll trial, Trump is at the center of a host of other criminal and civil cases, led by Bragg’s indictment.
Separately, New York Attorney General Letitia James is leading a civil investigation into whether his Trump Organization committed fraud over several years, with Trump and Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka alleged to have lied about their net worth to avoid tax and get better bank loans.
The Department of Justice is also investigating the removal of classified documents that were taken to his Palm Beach estate.
Trump says he is the victim of a witch-hunt and denies all wrongdoing. Carroll’s case, with a resolution expected in as little as a week, will be the first verdict in his trials.
Additional reporting by Joshua Rhett Miller
