Deposition denial
The attack occurred during a visit to the Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store one evening in the mid-1990s, Ms Carroll said. As she went out through a revolving door, Mr. Trump came in and recognized her. She testified and persuaded her to help him buy a gift for a friend. She said the former president then raped her in a dressing room in the lingerie department.
On Wednesday, Ms. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta A. Kaplan, played before jury excerpts of an October 2022 statement from Mr. Trump. At one point, he is asked if he ever contacted Bergdorf’s post-impeachment.
“I didn’t have to contact anyone,” Trump replies, adding that the attack 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 two other women “in a remarkably similar manner.”
One, Jessica Leeds, testified Tuesday. The other, Natasha Stoynoff, a former reporter for People magazine, took the witness stand Wednesday afternoon.
Ms. Stoynoff choked when she described how she traveled to Mar-a-Lago in late 2005 to prepare an article about Mr. Trump’s first wedding anniversary to his wife, Melania. Ms. Stoynoff said Mr. Trump led her into a room, closed the door, pushed her against the wall and began kissing her. Ms Stoynoff said she was “confused and a little shocked”.
Mrs. Stoynoff only told a few friends what happened, she said. But more than a decade later, after the revelation of the “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump bragged in vulgar terms about grabbing women by the genitals, she said she felt “a combination of sickening to the stomach” and “relief felt. ”
“Because I actually thought to myself for the first time, oh, he does this to a lot of women,” she said. “It’s not just me.”
