Donald Trump Faces Rape Allegation in New York Trial

Donald Trump will probably not attend the trial which is due to open on Tuesday April 25 in New York. “Yet his already tarnished reputation could take another very serious blow”, warns the correspondent in the United States from the British daily The Guardian : a New York jury must indeed decide whether or not he raped, almost forty years ago, the journalist E. Jean Carroll in a fitting room of the Bergdorf department store in Manhattan.

“The case has been making its way through the courts since 2019,” recalls the magazine The Daily Beast. A first lawsuit filed that year by E. Jean Carroll alleged that Trump had defamed her by denying the rape accusation she had made publicly in several interviews as well as in a book. It was then impossible for her to file a complaint for rape, the alleged facts being prescribed, underlines the newspaper.

But in November 2022, a New York State law called the “Adult Survivors Act” allowed victims of sexual assault to relaunch their civil lawsuit for a year in an attempt to obtain damages. . And that is precisely what the magazine’s former editorialist did in a New York state court Elle, also a long-time television host, encouraged both by the success of the #MeToo movement and by the multiple testimonies of women who have revealed that they have been harassed or assaulted by Donald Trump.

“A hoax and a lie” according to Trump

The complaint takes up the story previously delivered by E. Jean Carroll – 82 years old today – in particular in an interview with National Public Radio. “She claims that the then New York businessman recognized her while she was out shopping and asked her for help choosing a gift for a friend”, summary The Guardian. “He grabbed a little bodysuit from the counter and asked me to try it on,” supports E. Jean Carroll. Once in the dressing room, Donald Trump would have closed the door and, pinning his victim against a wall, would have raped her for several minutes before she managed to push him away and flee. Two witnesses, notified immediately after the assault, have since corroborated this account.

Donald Trump has formally denied the facts, asserting on several occasions that he did not know E. Jean Carroll and that besides she “wasn’t his type”. “It’s a hoax and a lie”, he recently launched on Truth Social, the social network of the Trump Media & Technology Group. But during his sworn deposition, when shown a photo of himself with E. Jean Carroll at a 1990s reception, he confused the journalist with his wife from 1993 to 1999, the comedian Marla Maples, recalls The Daily Beast.

The lawsuit comes as Donald Trump is already facing charges of fraud for trying to buy porn star Stormy Daniels’ silence during his 2016 campaign and several legal proceedings, conducted at the local and federal levels, notably for his role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. “Usually, in a civil lawsuit, only the money is involved. But this time the stakes are much higher, points out the magazine. Depending on how it unfolds, this trial could have a significant impact on ongoing criminal investigations and the 2024 presidential election.”