MANHATTAN (CN) — Donald Trump’s denials of columnist E. Jean Carroll’s rape accusations in 2019 “shattered” her reputation and prompted a torrent of online abuse and virulent death threats that continue to this day, the former Elle magazine columnist testified Wednesday.
Carroll is seeking civil damages for defamation in her 2019 lawsuit, saying Trump wrecked her 50-year career as a writer and journalist by denying that he sexually assaulted her some 25 years earlier inside a dressing room in the lingerie section of Bergdorf Goodman, and then unleashed his followers to attack her for coming forward.
Trump denied her account as false and fame-seeking, remarking on June 22, 2019, "'people should pay dearly for making up accusations."
Asked on Wednesday by her attorney Roberta Kaplan if she has “paid dearly” after coming forward against Trump, Carroll testified, “I’ve paid just about as dearly as is possible to pay.”
"To have the president of the United States, one of the most powerful persons on Earth, calling me a liar for three days, and saying I’m a liar 26 times — I counted them — it ended the world that I had been living, and I entered a new world,” she said Wednesday morning.
“Now I’m known as a liar, a fraud and whackjob,” Carroll said of her public reputation after Trump branded her a liar and an opportunist in 2019 when she first publicly accused him of raping her decades earlier.
Trump, who skipped the entirety of Carroll's first defamation trial against him, attended the start of jury selection in the second trial on Tuesday but skipped opening arguments in the afternoon to make an appearance at a campaign rally at the Atkinson Resort & Country Club in southern New Hampshire, where he leads in polling for the state's first-in-the-nation primary on Monday, Jan. 23.
Wearing a suit with his signature oversized red tie, Trump returned for the second day of trial, where he slouched at the defense table with his elbows on the desk during Carroll’s testimony and chortled with his attorneys, Alina Habba and Michael Madaio.
Trump looked in the opposite of Carroll's direction as she walked to the witness stand Wednesday morning.
With the jury out of the room for the first break of the day, Carroll's lawyer Shawn Crowley complained to the judge that Trump had been muttering loudly that Carroll is lying, and intimating that she has "now suddenly seems to have gotten her memory back."
Trump's commentary, said Crowley, a former federal prosecutor, was loud enough that the plaintiff's table could hear him and he speculated that it was likely within earshot of the jury box.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan gently admonished the former president to dampen his colloquy during the trial.
“I’m just going to ask Mr. Trump to take special care to keep his voice down when conferring with counsel, so that the jury does not overhear it," he instructed.
Despite the judge’s earlier warning Crowley said Trump continued to make comments during Carroll’s testimony, including loudly remarking, “it is a witch hunt” and “it really is a con job.”
“Mr. Trump has the right to present to be here, that right can be forfeited," Judge Kaplan cautioned Trump and his attorneys.
"And it can be forfeited if he is disruptive, which has what has been reported to me, and if he disregards court orders. Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from this trial… because you just can’t control yourself in this circumstance apparently.”
Trump taunted back to the judge: “I would love that.”
"I know you would," the Clinton-appointed judge replied.
Kaplan already found Trump liable on Carroll’s defamation claims in pretrial summary judgment, so the jury trial in the Southern District of New York will be to determine how much he owes her in damages.
The nine-person jury is hearing evidence pertaining to $10 million in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages requested by Carroll.
Carroll testified that has received “scores and scores” of hostile emails and social media messages daily — which began “instantaneously” following Trump’s denials in June 2019 and continue to this day — ranging from comments on her appearance, calling her “ugly, scrawny, hag,” to violent threats of rape and murder.
One message entered into evidence on Wednesday simply read: “Rape Jean, Rape Jean.”
Another urged her to stick a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger, she said.
“The image would flash into my mind. I couldn’t help but picture it. I couldn’t help but feel it was imminent,” Carroll explained. “The body believes it’s going to happen.”
The onslaught of threats of traumatic violence and sexual horror have caused her to remain hypervigilant, she testified, which includes keeping a gun by the side of her bed and leaving her watchdog pitbull off-leash to patrol her remote cabin in upstate New York.
“There’s hardly a moment in a day where I don’t take steps to be aware of what’s going on around me,” she said.
"I was attacked. I was attacked on Twitter. I was attacked on Facebook, I was attacked on news blogs," Carroll testified. "I was brutally attacked in messages… much of the wording that people used repeated Donald Trump’s words."
Asked by Roberta Kaplan how derogatory comments about her appearance made her feel, Carroll said, "It makes it hard for a girl to get up in the morning."
"I know I’m old, I know I’m 80, I know I’m not a pretty young woman, but it makes it tough to go on with the day,” she added.
Trump, the first former U.S. president to be indicted, faces 91 criminal counts across four states and federal jurisdictions — in Georgia, Florida, New York and the District of Columbia — even as he enjoys front-runner standing in 2024 Republican presidential primary polling.
The race for the Republican presidential nomination continues with the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 23, followed by South Carolina on Feb. 3 and Super Tuesday on March 5.
Trump has voiced his intention to take the witness stand for his defense case.
The trial, which started Tuesday, is expected to run one week.
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