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Donald Trump is a habitual liar and sexual abuser who destroyed E Jean Carroll’s reputation to protect his own after she accused him of rape, a New York jury heard on Monday.
In closing arguments in Ms Carroll’s civil lawsuit against Mr Trump for sexual battery and defamation, the advice columnist’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told jurors they could believe the evidence of 10 witnesses for her client or the former president who declined to testify.
Ms Kaplan’s said Mr Trump’s defence to the alleged rape in a New York department store dressing room in 1996 was that everyone else is “lying about everything”.
“In order to find for him you have to find that Donald Trump, the nonstop liar, is the only one in this court telling the truth,” she said.
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But Mr Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, told the six men and three women on the jury that, by her own admission, large parts of Ms Carroll’s account were “unbelievable” and “remarkable”.
“The whole story is an unbelievable work of fiction,” he said.
Ms Carroll is suing for unspecified damages, claiming that Mr Trump attacked her in a dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman’s lingerie department in the spring of 1996. The former Elle magazine advice columnist is also seeking damages for defamation after the former US president accused her of lying about the attack and “destroyed her reputation”.
The jury is expected to begin considering its verdict on Tuesday.
Ms Kaplan told the jury that Trump must face justice.
“No one, not even a former president, is above the law,” she said. “You must hold him to account in this court for what he has done.”
Ms Kaplan said the evidence showed that Ms Carroll was not a random victim of an attack by Mr Trump but one of a series of women who fell victim to his “modus operandi” of charming and then assaulting them.
Ms Kaplan said Trump’s own words demonstrate his guilt.
“In a very real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself,” she said. The lawyer pointed to Mr Trump’s claim that Carroll wasn’t his “type”.
“In other words, ‘she wasn’t attractive enough for me to sexually assault,’” said Ms Kaplan.
But the lawyer noted that at one point Mr Trump mistook a photograph of Carroll for his second wife, Marla Maples, who, Kaplan said, “was exactly his type”. Ms Kaplan also highlighted the Access Hollywood tape of Mr Trump boasting about kissing and groping women without their consent.
“What is Donald Trump doing here? Telling you in his own words how he treats women,” she said.
However, the former president’s lawyer said it did not matter that Mr Trump did not testify because Ms Carroll’s own words “tore apart her story”. Mr Tacopina said she admitted that it was “unbelievable” that no one else was on the department store floor when she says she was attacked.
Mr Tacopina said Ms Carroll had also said it was “an amazing coincidence” that a 2012 episode of the Law & Order television series involves a character talking about bursting into a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room as a woman tries on lingerie and raping her.
Mr Tacopina suggested the episode was the basis for Ms Carroll’s story.
Ms Kaplan dismissed the accusations that Ms Carroll and other women were lying to frame the former president.
“There’s no evidence, not a shred, that any such conspiracy exists,” she said. – Guardian