While Donald Trump’s lawyers have nonetheless asked for it to remain under wraps, excerpts from a video of the former president under oath were revealed on Friday, January 13. According to Huffpost, the politician is seen there insulting E. Jean Carroll during a testimony in October. This columnist accuses him of raping her in a department store in the 1990s.
“She says I did something to her that never happened. There was nothing. I don’t know anything about this lunatic,” he reportedly said, according to the video log. A dispute is said to have broken out between Roberta Kaplan, the plaintiff’s attorney, and the former President of the United States. The latter had questioned him about his statements that E. Jean Carroll was the origin of a “complete fraud” in which she described the facts of the rape “as if she were promoting a really lousy book.
He reportedly replied to the lawyer: “I’m going to sue her after this is over and that’s the only thing I’m really looking forward to. Before I add: And I’m going to sue you too. Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed the meeting at a Manhattan department store never took place.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan — independent of the attorney — also on Friday, January 13, denied a motion by Donald Trump’s attorneys to dismiss the rape and defamation allegations against E. Jean Carroll. A trial is planned for April.
Donald Trump totally denies this
In 2019, journalist Donald Trump first accused rape in her book What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal. He admitted that his statements at the time, namely “She’s not my type”, were not “politically correct”.
However, he claimed he stood by them, arguing, “She’s accusing me of rape, a woman I have no idea who she is.” Speaking to Roberta Kaplan, he reportedly added, “You also know that that’s not true. You are a political actor. You are a disgrace.”
Another excerpt from the statement shows Donald Trump characterizing the journalist as “mentally ill,” before suggesting she said she enjoyed being sexually assaulted: “She said she liked it. (…) I think she said it was sexy, right? She said it was sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say so?”
Donald Trump was referring to an interview given to CNN in which E. Jean Carroll claimed to prefer the term “rape” to “fighting” because other people “find rape sexy.”