Former President Donald Trump’s defense lawyer on Monday continued his cross-examination of writer E. Jean Carroll in the trial over her rape allegation against Trump, asking her about old Facebook posts where she said she was a “massive” fan of the former president’s TV show “The Apprentice.”
Carroll, whose lawsuit alleges Trump raped her in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s and defamed her by calling her claims a “hoax,” acknowledged praising the reality show on Facebook back in 2012, when it was still on the air.
“I was a big fan of the show. Very impressed by it,” said Carroll, 79.
“I had never seen such a witty competition on TV, and it was about something worthwhile, competing,” she said, adding that while she enjoyed the contestants and the competition, she didn’t like the parts with Trump firing people. “I didn’t watch that part,” she said.
Carroll said she posted positively about the show because “two of my friends appeared on it and I wanted to boost it.”
She was also asked about a 2012 post where she asked people if they’d have sex with Trump for $17,000 and could keep their eyes closed during it.
“Yes,” she said when asked if she’d written that post. “I made several jokes about Donald Trump.”
Carroll also acknowledged to the lawyer, Joe Tacopina, that in the decades after the alleged attack at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan, she kept shopping at the store.
“It is not a place I am afraid to enter,” she said.
In one testy exchange, Tacopina asked Carroll why she had sued Trump, but not former CBS CEO Les Moonves, who also denied her claim that he once sexually assaulted her.
“He just denied it,” Carroll said of Moonves. “He didn’t call me names and grind my face through the mud like Donald Trump did.”
As he did during his first day of cross-examination Thursday, Tacopina peppered Carroll with questions about why she never called police to report the attack, which she says occurred in 1995 or 1996.
He noted that in her old advice column in Elle magazine in the years before and after the alleged attack, she repeatedly counseled women who were sexually abused to call the authorities.
“I was born in 1943,” she responded. “Women like us were taught to keep our chins up and never complain. I would rather do anything than to call the police.”
In her suit, Carroll said Trump’s comments demeaning and insulting her since she came forward with her claims in a 2019 book had caused her “emotional pain and suffering at the hands of the man who raped her, as well as injury to her reputation, honor, and dignity.”
Tacopina asked her if her life “has been fabulous” since her book came out. “I like my life. I say it quite a bit,” Carroll said.
She then added while she’ll often say her life is “fabulous,” “I put up a front.” “I don’t want people to know I suffer. I would be ashamed if people know what’s actually going on,” she said.
It’s unclear whether Trump will testify in his own defense. Carroll’s attorneys have said they plan to use his videotaped deposition testimony for their case.
Before court on Monday, Tacopina filed a motion asking for a mistrial, arguing that the judge presiding over the case in Manhattan court, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, had made “pervasive unfair and prejudicial rulings” against his client.
Kaplan denied the motion.
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