Trump calls rape accuser a ‘nut job’ in recording performed for jury

NEW YORK (AP) — Jurors seeing Donald Trump’s video deposition Thursday listened to the former president deride a woman accusing him of rape as a “nut job” and “mentally sick,” whilst an pro believed that Trump’s earlier public denials could have caused just about $3 million in damage to the accuser’s name.

A transcript of Trump’s testimony about E. Jean Carroll emerged in court docket filings before the trial, but the deposition performed in court docket allowed jurors to listen to him discuss about the circumstance in his very own voice. Other components of the recording were demonstrated in courtroom Wednesday.

Carroll’s lawyers rested their case following taking part in the remaining deposition excerpts and contacting a few witnesses, including a close friend who explained Carroll informed her about the alleged rape soon soon after it occurred.

Trump’s attorneys, who have known as no witnesses, attempted to rest their case far too, but Judge Lewis Kaplan reported he would give them right until Sunday to make certain Trump has no next feelings just after choosing not to testify in his own defense.

Talking to reporters Thursday even though on a golf excursion to Eire, Trump prompt he would “probably attend” the demo, but attorney Joseph Tacopina mentioned there were no ideas for him to do so. Barring a Trump look, Kaplan mentioned, lawyers will make closing arguments Monday.

Trump, in Eire, also repeated his declare that the situation is a political “scam.” He knocked Kaplan, a Invoice Clinton appointee, as an “extremely hostile” and “rough judge” who “doesn’t like me incredibly substantially.”

Kaplan, who was irked at the the trial’s outset when Trump criticized the circumstance on social media, did not deal with his most recent remarks.

The movie shown Thursday also incorporated Trump standing by his prior reviews that Carroll was not his “type” and defending as “locker room talk” his notorious boasts in a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording about grabbing women’s genitals.

Later on, Northwestern University sociologist Ashlee Humphreys testified that a assertion Trump built in October 2022 reiterating prior denials had brought about in between $368,000 and $2.76 million in harm to Carroll’s name.

Trump’s statement, posted on his Truth of the matter Social system just times before he sat for the deposition, was witnessed by an estimated 13.8 million to 18 million individuals, Humphreys testified. She cited social science modeling she executed on behalf of Carroll’s attorneys.

Trump’s before denials triggered even much more reputational hurt, Humphreys said, as when Trump claimed that he had in no way met Carroll and when he reported she was “totally lying” just soon after she went general public in June 2019.

All those estimates could be a aspect if the jury finds that Trump defamed Carroll and ought to weigh monetary damages. She is trying to get an unspecified amount of money and a retraction of Trump statements that she alleges ended up defamatory.

Carroll, a 79-calendar year-aged writer and previous journal suggestions columnist, alleges that Trump raped her in an upscale New York office retailer dressing space in spring 1996.

According to Carroll, they ran into each individual other, acquired into lighthearted banter about making an attempt on lingerie and went jokingly into the fitting place, in which he slammed the doorway and suddenly became violent.

Not right until 2019 did she make the accusations general public and consider legal action, but two of her close friends have testified that she described the attack to them shortly right after Carroll explained it occurred.

“I thought it then, and I feel it now,” just one of these buddies, previous tv news anchor Carol Martin, said Thursday on the witness stand.

Trump, 76, claims that Carroll fabricated the whole come across and that he has by no means met her, apart from for a quick exchange of pleasantries at a 1987 social function.

“I consider she’s unwell, mentally ill,” Trump said calmly all through the deposition. He added: “She explained that I did something to her that in no way took location. There was no anything at all. I know almost nothing about this nut position.”

The Related Press normally does not identify people today who say they have been sexually assaulted until they appear forward publicly, as Carroll has completed.

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