The Manhattan jury that will decide whether Donald Trump raped journalist E. Jean Carroll finally heard from the former president on Thursday—but only through videotaped testimony in which he smugly kept dishing out brutish one-liners.
“She’s not my type… it’s not politically correct to say it. I know that, but I’ll say it anyway,” Trump said.
He later turned to Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.
“You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either,” Trump said to her face.
In the video, which was shown to the nine-panel jury, Trump was forced to rewatch the infamous leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted about abusing his celebrity status to sexually assault women because you can “grab ‘em by the pussy.”
Kaplan, who kept her cool and didn’t respond to Trump’s repeated personal attacks against her, asked him if he felt that stars could actually grab women “by the pussy.”
“Historically that’s true with stars. If you look over the last million years, that’s largely true, unfortunately—or fortunately,” he said.
Kaplan followed up by asking if Trump considers himself a star.
“Yeah,” he acknowledged.
So far, Trump has skipped the past two weeks of the civil trial, opting instead to fly to Scotland to mark the opening of his golf course there—one that local politicians have long wanted to investigate for suspicious financing.
But late Thursday, the federal judge overseeing the case was visibly concerned at the prospect of having a one-sided trial–all due to the former president’s own doing. So he offered a possible last minute opportunity to show up and testify, an unlikely but remarkable scenario.
In court earlier in the day, the six men and three women on the jury have heard Carroll detail how she encountered Trump at the luxury Manhattan clothing store Bergdorf Goodman sometime around 1996, where he allegedly duped her into helping him go lingerie shopping for a friend—only to allegedly rape her in a fitting room. She sued him for battery and defamation, with a civil trial that threatens to publicly brand him a rapist and punish him financially.
On Thursday, jurors observed how Trump answered questions under oath at a deposition last year. He shrugged off the leaked tape as “very old news,” fell back on his scripted defense that it was merely “locker room talk,” and attacked Carroll’s lawsuit as a political ploy fueled by a “made-up story.”
“I still don’t know this woman. I think she’s a whack job,” he said at his deposition. “I think she’s sick, mentally sick… I know nothing about this nut job.”
He also attacked Carroll’s lawyers in the room, calling Kaplan a “political operative.”
“You’re disg–” he began, stopping himself. “You’re a disgrace.”
His comments behind closed doors last year served as something of a rebuttal to testimony jurors heard earlier this week. On Tuesday, retired stockbroker Jessica Leeds detailed the way Trump pounced on her during a cross-country flight sometime around 1978. And on Wednesday, former People magazine journalist Natasha Stoynoff testified that Trump did the same to her at his South Florida oceanside estate of Mar-a-Lago when she took a break from interviewing his wife Melania for a story about their one-year anniversary.
During his deposition, Trump dismissed those accusations as fabrications. But jurors saw how Trump reacted when he was forced to watch 2016 presidential campaign videos where he resorted to pigheaded denials.
As he heard himself insult Leeds during a rally where he said, “She would not be my first choice,” Trump grumbled, “Nothing changes.”
“Can you imagine doing it on an airplane?” he asked Kaplan in a joking manner. “That’s almost as ridiculous as doing it in the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman.”
But Trump stood by his public statement last year that repeatedly called Carroll’s story “a hoax and a lie” concocted to sell “a really crummy book”—sentiments that form the core part of her defamation case.
“I wrote it all myself,” he said proudly.
The trial is expected to wrap up soon, as Carroll’s side rested its case and Trump’s lawyers indicated they won’t even make one—choosing instead to simply cast doubt on Carroll’s story. Trump’s lead defense attorney, Joe Tacopina, said he was ready to simply present his closing arguments on Monday.
That is, unless Trump decides to show up.
Just before calling it a day, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan expressed serious concern that Trump’s trial would appear unfair without the jury hearing from Trump directly. Kaplan, who is not related to Carroll’s lawyer, needed to be reassured that Trump himself knew what was going on–even asking Tacopina when exactly he had last spoken to his client.
Tacopina said he talked to Trump on Thursday morning just before proceedings started at 10 a.m., and that his client does indeed continue to waive his constitutional right to testify at his own trial.
Still, the federal judge said that, “in the interests of justice,” he would be willing to reopen the case briefly to allow Trump to show up—if he hears back by Sunday afternoon. The judge cited breaking news reports from across the Atlantic Ocean that Trump had apparently suggested a desire to fly to New York to confront Carroll.
“If he has second thoughts, I’ll at least consider it,” the judge said, adding that after 5 p.m. Sunday, “that ship has irrevocably sailed.”
Jurors are likely to start deliberating early next week.
