In their latest bid to protect former President Donald Trump at his upcoming rape trial, his lawyers finally explained why exactly New York City jurors shouldn’t be shown the infamous Access Hollywood tape where he described the joys of abusing the power of celebrity.
In a legal memo to a federal judge on Thursday, defense lawyers wrote that Trump’s 2005 comments—“when you’re a star, they let you do it… you can do anything… grab ’em by the pussy”—are entirely distinct from any accusation that he raped someone.
Trump is scheduled to go to trial in April for allegedly raping the journalist E. Jean Carroll in a high-end Manhattan department store in the 1990s. Trump’s lawyers are trying to keep that jury from hearing him boast about sexual harassment.
The tape “does not share any unique characteristics to this case or demonstrate a modus operandi or pattern of misconduct,” they argued in Thursday’s memo. “Here, the actions described on the tape bear little resemblance to the actions that allegedly took place in or around 1995.”
The lawyers accuse Carroll’s team of trying to ”convert this trial into a referendum on [Trump’s] character and distract the jury.”
