In the early hours of a cold January night last year, the City of London police received an emergency phone call.
“I’m calling from the US,” the caller said. “Uh, I just got a call from a girl, you know, she’s getting beat up.”
The speaker was Barron Trump, the youngest child of US president Donald Trump, and the details of the call became public during a trial in London this week.
Matvei Rumiantsev (22), a Russian citizen, is charged with offences including assault, strangulation and rape against his former partner, the woman Mr Trump referred to in his call to the police.
The woman cannot be named because, as a victim of an alleged rape, she has an automatic right to lifelong anonymity.
According to Metro, the newspaper that first reported on the trial, the woman testified in court Wednesday and said of Mr Trump, “He helped save my life. That call was like a sign from God at that moment.”
The president’s son will not appear in person to testify at the trial, prosecutors said, but his emergency call has been used as evidence, along with an email that he sent to the City of London Police last May after they wrote to him requesting a formal witness statement.
Mr Trump described the woman in the email to the police as someone “who I am very close with” and said he had met her over social media. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
In his email to the police, Mr Trump wrote that he had called the woman and “didn’t expect her to pick up due to the difference in the time zone”. He wrote that the phone was then answered, “but not by her to my dismay”. He described the man who appeared in the video call as shirtless and with dark hair. “This view lasted maybe one second and I was racing with adrenaline,” he wrote. “The camera was then flipped to the victim getting hit while crying.”
Mr Rumiantsev has denied all the charges. At the trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court in northeast London, he said the woman had been violent towards him on the night in question and had attempted to punch him in the face. He said he noticed that the cell phone was ringing, and saw on the screen that it was Mr Trump. “I answered the call, I immediately put the camera towards her,” he told the court, adding: “I thought maybe she would realise her behaviour was unreasonable.”
Mr Trump (19) grew up in the public eye. He was 10 years old when his father first entered the White House in 2017. His parents tried at the time to shield him from publicity, but as he grew older and went to college at New York University, media coverage increased. In 2024, he cofounded a cryptocurrency firm with his siblings and has appeared on many podcasts on behalf of his father, increasing his visibility.
A recording of Mr Trump’s call was played at the trial this week, and a transcript was provided by prosecutors.
Police received the call at 2:23am London time on January 18th, 2025. The transcript showed that Mr Trump told the call handler from the City of London Police: “It’s really an emergency.”
Mr Trump, who did not identify himself on the phone, gave the police the woman’s name and address and said he had witnessed an assault on a video call minutes earlier.
When the call handler asked how he knew the woman, Mr Trump replied: “I mean these details don’t matter, she’s getting beat up.”
The call handler told Mr Trump that they needed to take more information, including how he knew her, and Mr Trump replied: “I don’t think these details matter, she’s getting beat up, but OK fine, also I met her on social media. I don’t think that matters.”
The call handler said: “Can you stop being rude and actually answer my questions?”
After answering several more questions, Mr Trump said: “She’s getting really badly beat up and the call was about eight minutes ago, I don’t know what could have happened by now. So, sorry for being rude.”
When the police arrived at the woman’s property, she identified Mr Trump as the caller, according to Metro.
Documents provided to journalists by prosecutors showed that the woman had made two calls to the police shortly before Mr Trump contacted them, but that the calls were “interrupted before the operator could obtain all necessary details.”.
Mr Rumiantsev was arrested the same day the call was made to police. He denies committing six offences against the woman, of rape, assault and strangulation on the night Mr Trump contacted the police, and a previous rape and assault that he is accused of committing in November 2024.
Mr Rumiantsev also pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempting to “pervert the course of justice,” after he was accused of pressuring the woman to withdraw her accusations using phone calls and a letter from jail.
The trial continues today.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
