New York

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Video of Trump confusing E Jean Carroll with ex-wife in deposition is released

      by

      Video of Donald Trump’s deposition in his civil rape trial in New York City was released to the public on Friday.The footage, from last October, included a previously reported but never publicly seen exchange in which the former president mistook a picture of his accuser, the writer E Jean Carroll, for a picture of his second wife, Marla Maples.“That’s Marla, yeah,” Trump said. “That’s my wife.”His questioner said: “The person you’ve just pointed to is E Jean Carroll.”Carroll says Trump raped her in a department store in New York in the mid-1990s. She is suing for battery and for defamation, over comments he made while denying the claim, which she made in a book in 2019.In one such comment, repeated in his deposition, Trump said Carroll was not his “type”.On Friday, Renato Mariotti – a former federal prosecutor now a columnist for Politico – pointed to the impact the footage could have in deciding the case.“Trump claims E Jean Carroll isn’t his type,” Mariotti said, “but he mistook a picture of her for a picture of his ex-wife. You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand why his testimony could [affect] the jury’s verdict.”In the clip, Trump called Carroll’s claim “the most ridiculous, disgusting story” which he said was “just made up”. An exchange followed about when Trump became aware of a picture showing him with his first wife, Ivana Trump, Carroll and Carroll’s then husband, John Johnson, at a public event in New York.Shown the picture, Trump said: “I don’t even know who the woman – let’s see, I don’t know who, it’s Marla.”His questioner asked: “You say Marla’s in this photo?”Trump said: “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife.”Asked “which woman are you pointing to”, Trump said: “Here.”His questioner said: “The person you’ve just pointed to is E Jean Carroll.”“Oh I see,” Trump said, adding: “Is that Carroll? Because it’s very blurry”.Trump’s affair with Maples was a tabloid staple in the 1980s, one indelible headline, engineered by Trump, seeing Maples proclaim him the provider of the “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had”.In his deposition, he was asked if he had seen other women while married to his first wife. He answered: “I don’t know.”Trump was also shown repeating, “with as much respect as I can”, his contention that Carroll “is not my type. Not my type in any way, shape or form.”In rally footage shown at his deposition, Trump described Jessica Leeds, who accuses him of sexual assault on a plane in the late 1970s, as “not my first choice, that I can tell you … that would not be my first choice”. This week, Leeds testified for Carroll.Trump told Carroll’s lawyer she “wouldn’t be a choice of mine either, to be honest with you, I hope you’re not insulted, I would not in any circumstances have any interest in you”. He also called the lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, a “political operative” and a “disgrace”.Other footage showed Trump discussing the Access Hollywood, hot-mic footage which surfaced in 2016, briefly threatening to derail Trump’s election campaign.In that tape, Trump said: “I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet, just kiss, I don’t even wait and when you’re a star they just let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”In his deposition, he said: “Well historically, that’s true with stars.”He was asked: “It’s true you can grab them by the pussy?”He said: “Well, if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.”“You consider yourself a star?”“I think you can say that, yeah.”The jury saw the footage this week. Lawyers for Carroll rested on Thursday. For Trump, the lawyer Joe Tacopina said no witnesses would be called and Trump would not testify himself. Trump nonetheless has until 5pm on Sunday to change his mind.Trump faces other forms of legal jeopardy, including investigations of his election subversion, retention of classified records and business and tax affairs.In another New York case, he has pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts related to a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims an affair Trump denies.Politically, Trump has capitalised on his predicament, alleging persecution by Democrats, enjoying a flood of donations and surging to commanding leads in Republican primary polling. More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Witness says E Jean Carroll called her ‘hyperventilating’ after alleged rape by Trump

      by

      A close friend of E Jean Carroll has told a New York jury that she received a distressed call from the advice columnist within minutes of Donald Trump allegedly raping her.Lisa Birnbach testified at Carroll’s civil action against the former president on Tuesday that she was feeding her children at home when Carroll called “breathless, hyperventilating, emotional” in the spring of 1996.“She said: ‘Lisa, you’re not going to believe what happened to me’,” she said.Birnbach, a magazine writer and editor, described Carroll giving a brief description of meeting Trump at the entrance to the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman and how they decided to shop together. Birnbach said that Carroll then described Trump pinning her to a changing room wall and assaulting her.“E Jean said to me many times: ‘He pulled down my tights, he pulled down my tights,’ almost like she couldn’t believe it had just happened to her,” she said.Birnbach said Carroll then described Trump forcing first his fingers and then his penis into her vagina.“As soon as she said that, even though I knew my children didn’t know the word, I ducked out of the room and I whispered: ‘E Jean, he raped you, you should go to the police’. She said: ‘No, no I don’t want to go to the police.’ I said: ‘He raped you. I’ll take you to the police,’” Birnbach recounted.Birnbach said that Carroll remained adamant.“She said: ‘promise me you will never speak of this again and promise me you will tell no one,’” Birnbach testified. “And I promised both of those things.”Carroll, 79, is suing Trump for battery for allegedly raping her in a New York department store changing room in 1996, and for defamation for calling her a liar after she went public about the alleged assault in 2019.Birnbach is one of two women expected to testify that the advice columnist told them about the alleged assault shortly after it occurred.Birnbach said she was stunned when Carroll described going into the dressing room with Trump.“I was surprised that she did that,” Birnbach said. “I thought it was kind of nutty.”But Birnbach added that she did not think at the time that Trump was dangerous.One of the questions that has hung over the trial was why Carroll chose to call Birnbach immediately after the alleged assault when the two were no more than “work friends”, although they now describe themselves as very close.Birnbach said she believes it was because a few months earlier she had visited Trump to write an article about his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.Birnbach said she met Trump at a party in 1995, and he asked if she would be interested in seeing Mar-a-Lago.“He called me about once a month for five or six months to make sure I still wanted to write the article,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump flew Birnbach down on his private jet in January 1996, and she stayed two nights at the estate while he gave her a personal tour. The article was published the following month.“I believe E Jean called me, of all her friends and acquaintances, because she knew I had just been at Mar-a-Lago,” she said.Another of Carroll’s friends, Carol Martin, is also expected to testify that the advice columnist told her about the alleged rape at the time. Carroll has said that Martin advised her not to go to the police because Trump was a powerful businessman. Carroll said that was the advice she wanted to hear at the time.Birnbach said she never spoke to Carroll about the assault again until the advice columnist went public with her allegations against Trump in 2019.“It was her life, her story, not my story. She clearly didn’t want to tell anyone what happened and I honoured that,” she said.Birnbach said she “worked not to think about it”.“I buried it,” she said. “As life went on, it was easier not to think about it.”Birnbach acknowledged that she has been a fierce and vocal opponent of Trump over the years, calling him an “infection”, a “madman”, a “Russian agent”, and a “malignant sociopath”. She acknowledged feeling “hatred” for the former president.Asked why she was testifying, Birnbach said: “I’m here because I’m her friend and I want the world to know she’s telling the truth.”The trial continues.
      Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      E Jean Carroll says she sued for rape on advice of Trump adviser’s husband

      by

      The advice columnist E Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for rape after she was encouraged to take legal action by George Conway, the husband of a top aide to the then president.On her third day on the witness stand, Carroll told the jury hearing her lawsuit for battery and defamation over the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store changing room in 1996 that she did not intend to sue Trump until he called her a liar when she went public with her accusations more than two decades later.Shortly afterwards she met Conway, a lawyer who was at the time married to Kellyanne Conway, one of the Trump White House’s most visible officials. George Conway was a vocal critic of the then president, to the embarrassment of his wife.Carroll said that they spoke at a party where Conway laid out the difference between criminal case and civil cases.“George said: you should seriously think about this,” she told the jury of six men and three women.Two days later, Carroll filed her first lawsuit against Trump, for defamation, after he called her a liar in denying the alleged rape at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman store.Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, sought to characterise the lawsuit as politically motivated, in part through the association with Conway who went on to recommend a lawyer to Carroll.Tacopina contrasted that move – and a second more recent civil lawsuit for rape after a change in the law allowed for it – with Carroll’s decision not to take legal action against the former head of CBS, Les Moonves, who she also accused of sexual assault in an elevator.Carroll said that Moonves had not called her a liar.“He simply denied it,” she said. “He didn’t call me names. He didn’t grind my face into the mud like Donald Trump did.”Carroll said Moonves was accused of sexual abuse by a dozen women and that his denial of her allegation was one among many.Under cross-examination, Carroll defended her decision not to call the police after the alleged rape, as the typical response of women of her generation who are “ashamed” to have been sexually assaulted.She acknowledged that she frequently advised people to go to the police in her Elle column, Ask E Jean.“I was born in 1943. I’m a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and to not complain,” she said. “I would never call the police about something I am ashamed of.”Carroll acknowledged she did call the police on one occasion, when she saw “loutish behaviour by some kids”.Tacopina responded: “So your testimony is you’ll call the police if a mailbox is attacked but not if you are attacked?”Carroll said it was.“I will never, ever go to the police,” she said.Asked why, then, more than two decades after the alleged rape she decided to go public, Carroll said that times had changed.“I reached a point in my life at 76 where I was no longer going to stay silent,” she testified.Tacopina pressed Carroll about her continued shopping trips to Bergdorf Goodman where she spent thousands of dollars in the following years.“Bergdorf’s is not a place I’m afraid to enter,” she responded.Tacopina also highlighted Carroll’s complimentary comments about Trump’s television show The Apprentice. Carroll said she was praising the construct of the programme as “witty”.On Monday afternoon, in re-cross-examination, Tacopina asked Carroll if she was happy now and she responded that she was “with undertones of unhappiness”.Then after three days of intense testimony, Carroll’s stint on the witness stand ended.Later this week, Carroll’s legal team is expected to call her friend, Lisa Birnbach and another woman, Carol Martin, to testify that Carroll told them about the alleged assault shortly after it occurred. Both have since corroborated the account.Carroll testified that Birnbach told her the alleged attack was rape and to call the police. But Martin advised her to keep quiet because Trump was a powerful businessman who would “bury” her.Carroll kept her silence for more than two decades but changed her mind as other women came forward to recount their experiences of sexual assault and harassment as the #MeToo movement swept the US. She wrote a book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, detailing abuse of one kind or other by a number of men, including Trump. Excerpts were published in New York magazine in 2019.Trump called Carroll’s allegations “a complete con job” and said her book “should be sold in the fiction section”.“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City department store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a hoax and a lie,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Carroll’s legal team is also expected to call two other women. Natasha Stoynoff, a writer for People magazine, is expected to testify that in 2005 Trump led her into an empty room and forcibly kissed her until he was interrupted. Jessica Leeds accuses Trump of assaulting her on a plane in 1979 by grabbing her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ‘not planning’ to run for Senate seat in 2024

      by

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will not run for a seat in the US Senate next year, according to her office, clearing the way for incumbent New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, to run for re-election unopposed by the progressive congresswoman.“She is not planning to run for Senate in 2024. She is not planning to primary Gillibrand,” Lauren Hitt, Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesperson, told Politico.Gillibrand, who launched her re-election campaign in January for a third Senate term, was widely believed to be facing a number of potential challengers in the state primary, including Ocasio-Cortez.The announcement follows indications from other New York progressives, including Mondaire Jones and representatives Jamaal Bowman and Ritchie Torres, that they are not considering a challenge.New York Democrats were hit hard in the midterm elections last year and the loss of four seats to Republican candidates is widely blamed for the party losing control of Congress. Avoiding an acrimonious challenge from the progressive wing of the party, and concentrating on recovering the 2022 losses, is considered to be Democrats’ political priority.“I think it’s divisive. And unless you think you can win, it’s divisive unnecessarily,” Jay Jacobs, chair of the New York Democratic party, told Politico. “It’s using up resources we need to preserve for more coordinated work and the rest.”Camille Rivera, a New York-based progressive strategist, said that an intra-Democrat contest “could be pretty bruising and give a Republican a leg up”.Signs of a deal between Ocasio-Cortez and Gillibrand came after rumors of a Senate seat challenge began to circulate last year. Gillibrand has faced criticism for her part in forcing former senator Al Franken’s resignation, accepting donations from indicted crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried and ties to Wall Street.But Ocasio-Cortez’s staff’s choice of language – “not planning to run” is not the same as “not running”. Bronx representative Jamaal Bowman told the outlet he heard AOC’s name “weeks ago or months ago maybe” as a primary contender but hadn’t heard it since.Ocasio-Cortez’s indication comes as high-profile progressives have said they’ll support Joe Biden’s re-election bid, despite misgivings about parts of his agenda. Ocasio-Cortez has said she “unequivocally” supports the party’s nominees.Since Biden’s re-election soft launch on Tuesday, the sitting president has received endorsements from congressional progressive caucus leader Pramila Jayapal, representative Ro Khanna, and squad members Ilhan Omar, Greg Casar and Delia Ramirez.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe endorsements come despite disquiet about Biden’s recent push to the middle on crime, energy policy and immigration.“I think that people are looking at the incredible accomplishments, particularly the investments in climate change and equity, racial justice, and seeing that this is night and day from what anyone else has been able to do,” Jayapal told the Hill.Senator Elizabeth Warren has said she’s “delighted” about Biden’s decision. “I’m in all the way,” she told the outlet. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who ran for the Democrat nomination against Biden in 2020, told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday: “If you believe in democracy, you want to see more people vote, not fewer people vote, I think the choice is pretty clear, and that choice is Biden.”But Sanders leaned on Biden to be stronger on working-class issues, and urged the president and the party “to make it clear that we believe in a government that represents all, not just the few; take on the greed of the insurance companies, the drug companies, Wall Street, all the big money interests; and start delivering for working-class people.”“You do that, I think Biden is going to win in a landslide,” Sanders added. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Guiliani admits using ‘dirty trick’ to suppress Hispanic vote in mayoral race

      by

      Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has admitted to a “dirty trick” that his campaign used to suppress the Hispanic vote during the city’s 1993 mayoral race.On Tuesday, Giuliani revealed his voter suppression tactics to the far-right Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon and Arizona’s defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake during a discussion on his America’s Mayor Live program.In the conversation, Giuliani – who was central to Trump’s efforts to subvert the result of the 2020 presidential election – lamented that he had been “cheated” during the 1989 mayoral race in which he lost before explaining his 1993 campaign strategy, saying: “I’ll tell you one little dirty trick,” to which Lake replied: “We need dirty tricks!”“A dirty trick in New York City? I’m so shocked,” Bannon sarcastically responded. Giuliani then interrupted the former Trump adviser, saying: “No, played by Republicans!”“Republicans don’t do dirty tricks,” Bannon said before Giuliani enthusiastically said: “How about this one?” Bannon replied: “Okay give it to me.”Giuliani explained that he spent $2m to set up a so-called Voter Integrity Committee which was headed by Randy Levine, current president of the New York Yankees baseball team, and John Sweeney, a former New York Republican congressman.“So they went through East Harlem, which is all Hispanic, and they gave out little cards, and the card said: ‘If you come to vote, make sure you have your green card because INS are picking up illegals.’ So they spread it all over the Hispanic …” said Giuliani, referring to the now defunct US Immigration and Naturalization Service before trailing off.“Oh my gosh,” Lake replied as she raised her eyebrows.Following its closure in 2003, the INS transferred its immigration enforcement functions to other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Giuliani went on to reveal that following the election, which he won against then incumbent mayor David Dinkins by around 53,000 votes, then president Bill Clinton’s justice department launched an investigation into him.“[Then-attorney general] Janet Reno is coming after us, we violated civil rights,” Giuliani recalled his lawyer Dennison Young telling him. Giuliani then reassured Young, saying: “What civil rights did we violate? They don’t have civil rights! All we did was prevent people who can’t vote from voting. Maybe we tricked them, but tricking is not a crime.”“In those days, we didn’t have crazy prosecutors. Nowadays, they’ll probably prosecute you for it … and that’s the way we kept down the Hispanic vote,” Giuliani said.“Not the legal vote, the illegal vote,” Lake interjected.“Of course! The Hispanic illegal vote, which takes away the Hispanic legal vote,” Giuliani responded.The Huffington Post compiled a handful of media reports from the time which collectively point towards Giuliani’s voter suppression tactics during the election.A 1993 New York Times article published at the time of the election reported that Dinkins had called for a news conference to “accuse the Giuliani camp of waging ‘an outrageous campaign of voter intimidation and dirty tricks’”.One of the charges included English and Spanish pro-Dinkins posters that were allegedly put up at the time in Washington Heights and the Bronx, predominantly Hispanic and Black areas. “The posters suggested that illegal immigrants would be arrested at the polls and deported if they tried to vote,” the New York Times reported.An article published in the socialist journal Against the Current months after the election also mentioned the posters.“Cops put up phony Dinkins posters in mostly Dominican Washington Heights, saying the INS would be checking voters’ documents at the polls. In some cases police themselves asked Latino voters for their passports,” wrote labor and social activist Andy Pollack.Similarly, a Washington Post report published days after the election cited complaints surrounding voter suppression in the city.“Among the complaints are the placing of signs on telephone poles and walls in Latino areas warning that ‘federal authorities and immigration officials will be at all election sites … Immigration officials will be at locations to arrest and deport undocumented illegal voters,’” the Post reported.A statement issued by the then justice department on 2 November 1993 said: “The Department of Justice is aware that posters have been placed throughout New York City misinforming voters about the role of federal officials in today’s elections … Federal observers are in New York to protect the rights of minority voters. They are not there to enforce immigration laws.”Speaking to the Huffington Post, Sweeney dismissed Giuliani’s claims as “nonsense” and said that he ran a “legitimate” operation alongside Levine. Levine echoed similar sentiments to the outlet, explaining that the purpose of the operation was “getting poll watchers and attorneys when there was a dispute”.He added that he had “no knowledge” of the trick Giuliani described.Since the 1993 mayoral elections, voter suppression tactics have continued to be carried out in various ways across the city.In December 2021, the New York City council approved a bill that would have allowed for non-US citizens to vote in local elections. However, the law was struck down months later in June 2022 after state supreme court judge Ralph Porzio of Staten Island ruled the law “unconstitutional”.The same month Porzio struck down the law, the Democratic New York governor Kathy Hochul signed the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act into law, which seeks to prevent local officials from enacting rules that may suppress voting rights of individuals as a result of their race.In addition to local governments or school districts with track records of discrimination now being required to obtain state approval before passing certain voting policies, the new law expands language assistance to voters for whom English is not a first language, as well as provides legal tools to fight racist voting provisions.“We’re going to change our election laws so we no longer hurt minority communities,” Hochul said as she signed the bill into law. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Who is E Jean Carroll, the woman who alleges Trump sexually assaulted her?

      by

      E Jean Carroll is an 80 year-old former journalist who, until she accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her, was best known as an advice columnist for Elle magazine for 26 years.The column was praised for its forthright writing including Carroll’s view that women should never build their lives around men and the compassion of her replies to readers seeking advice. Elle terminated Carroll’s contract in 2019. She said the magazine fired her because of her dispute with Trump. Elle denied it.Born in Detroit and raised in Indiana, Carroll began writing for leading magazines of the era, including Rolling Stone and Playboy, after drawing attention with a “witty literary quiz” about Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald for Esquire.Carroll left her husband and moved to New York where she established herself as “feminism’s answer to Hunter S Thompson”. By the mid-1980s she was writing for Saturday Night Live. A decade later she turned the advice column into a television talk show, Ask E Jean.Carroll was well known within New York’s literary set. But she is now likely to be best remembered for her book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, and for suing Trump. The book describes the alleged assault by the now former president and attacks by other men, including the former chief executive of CBS Les Moonves, who was forced out over allegations of sexual harassment. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      AOC: ‘Better for country’ if Dominion had secured Fox News apology

      by

      Dominion Voting Systems would have better served the US public had it refused to settle its $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News until the network agreed to apologise on air for spreading Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said.“What would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that,” the New York congresswoman said.Dominion and Fox this week reached a $787.5m settlement, shortly before trial was scheduled to begin in a Delaware court.Legal filings laid out how in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s election win and the run-up to the January 6 attack on Congress, Fox News hosts repeated claims they knew to be untrue, as executives feared viewers would desert the network for rightwing competitors One America News and Newsmax.Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media mogul and Fox News owner, was among witnesses due to testify.Fox faces other legal challenges but its avoidance of an apology to Dominion caused widespread comment, with some late-night hosts moved to construct their own on-air mea culpas.Ocasio-Cortez, popularly known as AOC, acknowledged Dominion was not beholden to public opinion.“This was a corporation suing another corporation for material damages,” she told the former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC host, on Sunday. “Their job is to go in and get the most money that they can. And I think that they did that. They are not lawyers for the American public.”The congresswoman continued: “I think what is best for the country, what would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that. But that is not their role.“And so for us, I think this really raises much larger questions. Very often, I believe that we leave to the courts to solve issues that politics is really supposed to solve, that our legislating is supposed to solve.“We have very real issues with what is permissible on air. And we saw that with January 6. And we saw that in the lead-up to January 6, and how we navigate questions not just of freedom of speech but also accountability for incitement of violence.”Nine deaths have been linked to the January 6 Capitol attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting the attack. Acquitted by Senate Republicans, he is the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked if media platforms should be held accountable for incitement, Ocasio-Cortez said: “When it comes to broadcast television, like Fox News, these are subject to federal law, federal regulation, in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t.“And when you look at what [the primetime host] Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence. And that is the line that I think we have to be willing to contend with.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      New York trial could confer new title on Donald Trump: rapist

      by

      Donald Trump won’t be there to see it, but the former US president’s deeply tarnished reputation may be about to take another serious hit as a New York jury decides whether he is a rapist.E Jean Carroll, a former advice columnist and author, will finally get her day in court this week, nearly four decades after she alleges that Trump pinned her against the wall of a New York department store and sexually assaulted her.Carroll is suing Trump for damages under a recent New York state law opening a one-year window for adult victims of sexual assault to file civil cases after the statute of limitations has expired. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in a Manhattan court on Tuesday.The trial comes as Trump already faces criminal fraud charges over the payment of hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels, and the prospect of looming federal and state prosecutions over attempts to fix the 2020 election, the January 6 storming of the Capitol and the hoarding of classified documents.But Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said the case stands out even amid Trump’s myriad legal problems because it revives memories some of his most egregious behavior as he once again runs for president.“One of the things that happened because of Trump’s election in 2016 was this collective outrage from women across the country for a whole host of reasons, but in many ways encapsulated by that video of him talking about grabbing women by their genitalia. There was this moment for many women who thought it would not be possible for someone caught saying that to ever become president of the United States. And then he was,” she said.“This case brings all that up and in some ways adds to that outrage that women feel about him. He has been accused of this kind of behaviour so many times and he’s never been held accountable. This time it seems like he may in fact be held accountable.”Carroll accuses Trump of raping her in a dressing room of the New York department store, Bergdorf Goodman, some time in late 1995 or early the following year. She claims that the New York businessman recognised her as she shopped and asked for help in choosing a present for a woman who is not named in the litigation.Carroll told National Public Radio she thought it was “just charming” that Trump wanted advice on buying a present. But then he led the way to the lingerie department.“He had grabbed up from the counter a little see-through bodysuit and told me to go try it on,” said Carroll. “And that’s where I got into trouble, because we went into the dressing room and he closed the door and that was it.”Carroll alleges that Trump pushed her against a wall and forcibly kissed her until she pushed him away.“Then he pressed her against the wall once more, pulled down her tights, and forcibly raped her for several minutes until she managed to push him off and fled the store,” according to the lawsuit.Carroll said that she immediately told one friend about the assault and a second in the following days. Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin have since corroborated the account.But Carroll did not file a complaint with the police because she “was in shock and did not wish to think of herself as a rape victim”.“The two friends in whom she confided gave her conflicting advice about reporting the event. Ultimately, she was persuaded by the advice of the friend who advised her to keep quiet. That friend stressed that Mr Trump was powerful and would ‘bury’ Ms Carroll if she came forward,” the complaint alleges.Carroll changed her mind when Trump was elected president and following the accusations against the film producer Harvey Weinstein that led to the #MeToo movement. She wrote a book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, detailing abuse of one kind or other by a number of men, including Trump. Excerpts were published in New York magazine.Trump responded with his usual vigor, claiming never to have met Carroll even though there is a photograph of the pair with their respective spouses a few years before the alleged assault. He called her allegations “a complete con job” and said Carroll’s book “should be sold in the fiction section”.“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a Hoax and a lie,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social.“And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!”Trump said that Carroll’s inability to pin down an exact date for the assault was evidence that it never happened.“Now all I have to do is go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phoney attacks on me. This can only happen to ‘Trump’!”Trump’s defence team appears likely to accuse Carroll of a politically motivated attack on the former president. The judge is permitting the defence to submit evidence that her lawsuit is funded in part by the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, who is a harsh critic of Trump.The former president told the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan, that he would not be attending the hearing as he did not want to disrupt New York’s traffic with his motorcade. Kaplan scoffed at that explanation.But Carroll will give testimony along with the two friends who corroborate her account that she sought their advice immediately after the alleged assault.Walsh said this could be a dangerous moment for Trump because Carroll is likely to make a highly credible witness.“It’s not that you hear this story from her, and you go, ‘Oh, that couldn’t be. That’s not him.’ It fits a pattern with him,” she said.Nonetheless, Walsh is not sure if the Carroll trial will prove the moment of reckoning she says Trump deserves to face.“It’s sometimes quite astonishing to watch how much he can get away with. Is this all a moment of reckoning? With these other cases that are pending, could this be the moment where he finally can’t talk himself out of this stuff? I don’t know,” she said.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said that if the jury finds that Trump did rape Carroll, there will be a political consequence but it will not be immediate.“It will not affect his base that is powering him potentially to another nomination. They don’t care. Not only will this not hurt him, it’s going to reinforce the image that his core supporters have that he is being persecuted. So, for the nomination, it could even be a plus, I’m sorry to say,” he said.“But it’ll hurt him in a general election. Carroll is very believable and it should have some effect on Americans who are not in the Maga base.”Walsh agrees, saying that, combined with Trump’s other legal problems, it will remind white female Republican voters, who supported him in 2016 despite the comments about grabbing genitalia, why they then turned away from him four years later and played an important part in his defeat.“It’s one thing when you are boasting to your buddy and showing off. It’s another thing when you have a woman stepping forward saying ‘you raped me’,” she said.“College-educated white women who are Republicans have pulled away from the party. In the past, the party sort of trumped everything. In a way, that’s what happened in 2016. But after watching Trump be the president, it became harder and harder for those women to continue to pull the lever for Donald Trump. These women who used to be pretty solid Republican women voters couldn’t go there. I think these women would have a very hard time if he is the nominee again.”Carroll has two separate cases against Trump. The first accuses him of defaming her in 2019 when he denied her accusations.But that case is on hold pending the second lawsuit made possible after New York passed the adult survivors act last year opening the window for people who were sexually assaulted as adults to bring legal actions against their attackers in the wake of the #MeToo movement. More