The federal judge in Carroll’s civil lawsuit has allowed her attorney to introduce into evidence the Access Hollywood tape, as well as testimony from two other women, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stroynoff, who claim that Trump sexually assaulted them. The three women are among at least 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual assault since the 1970s. But Trump was never charged in any of these cases.
If Trump had not been president—the most powerful person in the world—and just a celebrity businessman and reality TV host, he might very well have faced a fate similar to Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby after the emergence of the #MeToo movement.
Nevertheless, Carroll’s civil lawsuits could be extremely embarrassing for Trump, at a time when the presidential candidate is facing potential criminal indictments, as well as civil lawsuits brought by Capitol Police, D.C. Metro Police officers, and others.
On Friday, Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation) that both sides had agreed that the two cases stemming from comments made by Trump that Carroll considered defamatory be consolidated into one trial.
Among the points agreed to by both parties were:
- The consolidated trial shall start on April 25;
- The consolidated trial shall cover liability and damages for both Carroll I and Carroll II.
- The jury shall use a special verdict form to separately identify the damages, if any, attributable to each claim in Carroll I and Carroll II.
- The parties shall not seek any stay of the trial date in either Carroll I or Carroll II.
However, the judge denied the request for a consolidated trial on Monday, Only the defamation case will move forward next month.
The Kaplan letter states:
“Because of the overlapping nature of these proceedings, a single trial will reduce costs across the board, avoid the risk of inconsistent factual rulings or jury confusion, and economize matters for the Court (as well as for both parties’ witnesses).
Here’s how The Hill summarized the two lawsuits brought by Carroll:
The first defamation case comes from comments Trump made in 2019 accusing Carroll of lying about the rape allegation and criticizing her physical appearance. The second one stems from a post he made on Truth Social in October saying that the allegation is a “hoax and a lie” and a “complete scam.”
Carroll also sued Trump for battery in the second defamation suit after New York passed the Adult Survivors Act to open a one-year window for survivors of rape and sexual assault to sue the alleged perpetrator even if the statute of limitations had expired.
Both sides agreed that the trial should go ahead, even though the District of Columbia Court of Appeals is still considering whether Trump was acting within his official capacity as president when he made disparaging comments about Carroll in 2019. Kaplan’s letter requested that the D.C. court defer issuing any decision until the conclusion of the trial(s) in New York.
If the D.C. court rules that Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when responding to reporters’ questions about Carroll’s rape allegations, that would make the United States, rather than Trump, the defendant. Carroll’s first defamation lawsuit would then likely fail, The New York Times asserts.
[T]he Justice Department took over Mr. Trump’s defense, invoking the Westfall Act, which allows the federal government to step in as the defendant in lawsuits against federal officials. If a court approves such a substitution, the lawsuits must then be dismissed as a matter of sovereign immunity.
Since then, the legal case has been consumed by a fight over whether the Justice Department’s intervention was justified. Lawyers for Ms. Carroll have contended that Mr. Trump was acting as a private citizen. Lawyers for Mr. Trump have argued that he spoke to the news media while in office, so he was acting in his capacity as president.
[...]
While the ruling could determine the future of Ms. Carroll’s defamation case, it will not be the final word on what has become a protracted legal battle between her and Mr. Trump.
Kaplan’s March 10 memorandum opinion that the jury could hear the Access Hollywood tape released in October 2016, as well as testimony from two other women who have accused Trump of sexual assault, is significant.
Trump’s lawyers sought to bar this evidence from being presented to the jury. In the Access Hollywood tape, Trump spoke about making apparently unsolicited sexual advances toward women, and at one point said, “And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
“In this case, a jury reasonably could find, even from the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape alone, that Mr. Trump admitted in the Access Hollywood tape that he in fact has had contact with women’s genitalia in the past without their consent, or that he has attempted to do so,” Judge Kaplan wrote.
Trump has claimed that the 2005 Access Hollywood tape was just “locker room talk” between him and host Billy Bush. The judge said that Trump could raise those defenses at his trial.
"He was like an octopus. His hands were everywhere," Leeds told the newspaper, adding that she fled to the back of the plane.
Leeds said that she was working at a Humane Society gala in New York several years after the airplane incident, which was attended by Trump and his wife. She said Trump recognized her and said, “I remember you. You’re the c*nt from the airplane” (as quoted by Judge Kaplan in his opinion).
Trump denies the allegation and told an October 2016 campaign rally that Leeds “would not be my first choice.” Trump used a similar remark about Carroll to dismiss her accusations when he said she was “not his type” and denied that the incident ever happened.
Stoyner, a People Magazine reporter, wrote in an October 2016 column that Trump sexually assaulted her in 2005, when she was visiting Mar-a-Lago to report on a story about Trump and his new wife Melania’s first year of marriage.
Stoyner wrote:
When we took a break for the then-very-pregnant Melania to go upstairs and change wardrobe for more photos, Donald wanted to show me around the mansion. There was one “tremendous” room in particular, he said, that I just had to see.
[…]
We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.
Now, I’m a tall, strapping girl who grew up wrestling two giant brothers. I even once sparred with Mike Tyson. It takes a lot to push me. But Trump is much bigger — a looming figure — and he was fast, taking me by surprise and throwing me off balance. I was stunned. And I was grateful when Trump’s longtime butler burst into the room a minute later, as I tried to unpin myself.
Stoyner added that “in those few minutes alone with Trump, my self-esteem crashed to zero. How could the actions of one man make me feel so utterly violated?” Stoyner said Trump told her: “You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you.”
A Trump spokesman told People that “There is no merit or veracity to this fabricated story.”
In his opinion allowing the women’s testimony, Judge Kaplan wrote:
“Mr. Trump’s attempt to minimize the similarity between his alleged actions with respect to Ms. Leeds and Ms. Stoynoff, on the one hand, and Ms. Carroll on the other is not very persuasive. The alleged acts are far more similar than different in the important aspects. In each case, the alleged victim claims that Mr. Trump suddenly attacked her sexually. In the cases of Ms. Carroll and Ms. Stoynoff, he allegedly did so in a location after closing a door behind him, which gave him privacy. In all three cases, he allegedly did so without consent.”
Judge Kaplan notes that the testimony of Leeds and Stoynoff is important in what he said amounts to a “he said, she said” case, where “there will be no physical evidence supporting either side at trial.”
Trump gave a deposition in the case last October, and apparently didn’t help his case, which comes down to a matter of who is considered more credible: Carroll or Trump.
The Guardian:
Donald Trump mistook E Jean Carroll, the writer who accuses him of rape, for his ex-wife Marla Maples during a deposition in the case last year, excerpts released in US district court on Wednesday showed.
“That’s Marla, yeah,” Trump said, when shown a photograph. “That’s my wife.”
The mistake was corrected by a lawyer for the 76-year-old former president. But observers said it could undermine Trump’s claim he could not have attacked Carroll because she is not his “type”.
The Associated Press released other excerpts from Trump’s deposition in which he hurled insults at Carroll.
“She said that I did something to her that never took place. There was no anything. I know nothing about this nut job,” he said, according to the transcript.
The excerpts reveal a contentious battle between Trump and Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, who questioned him as Trump called the former longtime Elle magazine columnist the perpetrator of “a complete scam” in which she described the rape as she “was promoting a really crummy book.”
“I will sue her after this is over, and that’s the thing I really look forward to doing. And I’ll sue you too,” he told Kaplan.
Is there any real difference between Trump and Weinstein or Cosby? Both were sexual predators who evaded exposure for decades before they were finally brought to trial, convicted and sentenced to prison.
In her October 2016 People story, Stoyner described why she didn’t make a complaint back in 2005.
But, like many women, I was ashamed and blamed myself for his transgression. I minimized it (“It’s not like he raped me…”); I doubted my recollection and my reaction. I was afraid that a famous, powerful, wealthy man could and would discredit and destroy me, especially if I got his coveted PEOPLE feature killed.
“I just want to forget it ever happened,” I insisted. The happy anniversary story hit newsstands a week later and Donald left me a voicemail at work, thanking me.
In October 2019, feminist author Jessica Valenti had this to say in a Medium piece about who Trump should be compared to:
“In the last two years, powerful abusers have finally gotten their comeuppance, from Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby to Matt Lauer and Les Moonves — even Trump pal Jeffrey Epstein was arrested before his death by suicide. But Trump remains in power, and largely believed by his supporters.
“The president is absolutely in the same league as these other powerful men — men who will forevermore be described as abusers. It’s the first thing we say about them!”
Finally, here’s Carroll in her own words.
Editor’s Note, March 20, 2023, 3:02 PM ET: This story and headline have been updated to reflect Judge Kaplan’s denial of the request to consolidate the Carroll trials.