Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll, the writer whose lawsuit accusing former President Donald J. Trump of rape is on trial in Manhattan, are expected to rest their case on Thursday after presenting final witnesses on her behalf.
At the same time, Mr. Trump, traveling in Ireland, again attacked Ms. Carroll and the judge presiding over the trial, which he thus far has avoided.
Mr. Trump said while he played golf at his Doonbeg golf resort in southwest Ireland on Thursday that he might return to New York for the proceedings, according to a Reuters report. “I have to go back for a woman that made a false accusation about me, and I have a judge who is extremely hostile,” he said.
Ms. Carroll has testified that Mr. Trump raped her in the mid-1990s in a dressing room in the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman, an allegation Mr. Trump denies.
Mr. Trump’s statement came after his lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, had said in court that Mr. Trump would not be coming to testify and that no witnesses would take the stand in Mr. Trump’s defense. It was unclear from Mr. Trump’s statement in Ireland whether he wants to testify or merely to observe the proceedings from the defense table.
In his statement about the trial from Ireland, Mr. Trump was also quoted by Reuters saying, “I think it’s a disgrace that it’s allowed to happen, false accusations against a rich guy, or in my case against a famous, rich and political person.”
Mr. Trump’s harsh criticism of Ms. Carroll in his statement could draw the ire of the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court, who last week sharply criticized Mr. Trump’s use of his Truth Social website to call Ms. Carroll’s case a “fraudulent & false story” and a “made up SCAM.”
Judge Kaplan told Mr. Tacopina at the time that Mr. Trump’s statements on social media were “entirely inappropriate,” and he suggested Mr. Trump was seeking to influence the jury in the case. Judge Kaplan implied that Mr. Trump could face a contempt sanction.
After Mr. Trump’s son, Eric, later in the day posted his own statement, on Twitter, criticizing the motivation of a prominent backer of Ms. Carroll’s case, Judge Kaplan implied from the bench that more serious remedies might be called for. Although he did not elaborate, he seemed to suggest Mr. Trump might be violating a federal law that prohibits efforts to corruptly influence or intimidate a juror in a trial.
Deposition Denial
The attack happened during a visit to the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman one evening in the mid-1990s, Ms. Carroll has said. As she was leaving through a revolving door, Mr. Trump entered and recognized her, she testified, and persuaded her to help him shop for a gift for a female friend. She said the former president went on to rape her in a dressing room in the lingerie department.
On Wednesday, Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, played for the jury clips from an October 2022 deposition by Mr. Trump. At one point, he is asked whether he ever contacted Bergdorf’s after the allegation.
“I didn’t have to reach out to anybody,” Mr. Trump responds, adding that was because the assault never happened. “It’s the most ridiculous, disgusting story,” he says. “It was just made up.”
In the Courtroom
Ms. Carroll’s lawyers promised in their opening statement last week to show the jury that Mr. Trump had assaulted not only her, but also two other women “in a remarkably similar way.”
One, Jessica Leeds, testified on Tuesday. The other, Natasha Stoynoff, a former People magazine reporter, took the witness stand on Wednesday afternoon.
Ms. Stoynoff choked up as she described how she had traveled to Mar-a-Lago toward the end of 2005 to prepare an article about Mr. Trump’s first wedding anniversary with his wife, Melania. Ms. Stoynoff said Mr. Trump led her into a room, shut the door, pushed her against the wall and started kissing her. Ms. Stoynoff said she was “flustered and sort of shocked.”
Ms. Stoynoff disclosed what had happened only to a few friends, she said. But more than a decade later, after the disclosure of the “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump boasted in vulgar terms about grabbing women by the genitals, she said she felt “a combination of sick to my stomach” and “relief.”
“Because I actually for the first time thought to myself, oh, he does this to a lot of women,” she said. “It’s not just me.”
