Sexual “attacker”, “liar” and “defamer”: Donald Trump was the target Wednesday at his civil defamation trial in New York by his accuser, ex-journalist E. Jean Carroll, who had already had him convicted in 2023 to compensation for sexual assault.
The former President of the United States, who dreams of becoming one again, is shuttling this week between his campaign for the first Republican primaries and the Manhattan courthouse with the ambition of also making it a political platform.
Returning home to New York on Tuesday evening from a meeting in the small, cold and snowy state of New Hampshire (north-east), where the primaries will take place on January 23, the 77-year-old tycoon left his “Trump Tower” and sat in the courtroom Wednesday opposite the author and former columnist for the American magazine Elle, E. Jean Carroll, 80 years old.
“I am here because Donald Trump assaulted me (sexually), when I wrote about it he lied and destroyed my reputation,” she whispered in front of the nine jurors, according to CNN and NBC televisions which have access to the New York civil court room.
Ms. Carroll faces for the second day the man she has accused for years of having raped her almost 30 years ago.
She finally had him declared civilly responsible, during a first trial last May in New York, for “sexual assault” in 1996 in a fitting room of a department store in the city and for defamation for comments in 2022. Donald Trump was thus ordered by the civil jury to pay him five million dollars in compensation.
He appealed and was never criminally prosecuted in this case.
“Crazy” and “phony”
Despite this court decision, he never stopped denigrating and insulting his victim, called a “crazy” woman with a “phony story” and whom he said he had “never seen in (his) life “.
“It’s a lie,” she replied Wednesday, imploring the jury to “restore (her) reputation” and demanding at least ten million dollars for moral and professional damage.
More than ever a favorite in the Republican Party primaries after dominating the Iowa caucus in the Midwest on Monday, the billionaire has already spent his Tuesday in the courtroom without exchanging a glance with the writer.
Targeted by at least six civil and criminal trials, the New York businessman and Republican tribune transformed each of his indictments or appearances into a political forum. He has increased the virulent invectives against the justice system and the Democratic camp of President Joe Biden, whom he accuses of wanting to convict him to prevent him from winning the November presidential election.
He repeated to his supporters on Tuesday evening that his successor in the White House, and again likely opponent in November, was leading “a witch hunt”.
Mr. Trump must return to campaign Wednesday evening in New Hampshire in order to “pocket votes” in the January 23 election.
Second trial
This second defamation trial is expected to last several days but is limited in substance and in time thanks to the first civil judgment last May.
The debates revolve around another defamation complaint from Ms. Carroll for previous statements by Donald Trump, in June 2019, in the wake of his first accusations of rape contained in his book.
Then President of the United States (2017-2021), he claimed that the woman who was “not his type” had invented everything to “sell a new book”. The procedure had experienced delays but this second trial was maintained and will also look at comments made by Donald Trump since the spring of 2023.
And these new setbacks in court, with those of the coming months, raise more generally the question of Donald Trump’s behavior towards women, after numerous accusations of sexual assault never brought to trial in criminal proceedings.
