Trump seeks to suppress sexual assault evidence at trial

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Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked a judge to prevent jurors in his upcoming civil trial from hearing testimony that he sexually assaulted two other women besides E. Jean Carroll, the writer who sued him for defaming him after she alleged in 2019 that he raped her in the 1990s.

His lawyers also want Manhattan court Judge Lewis Kaplan to bar evidence of Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he bragged about kissing and groping women without their consent. , new legal filings reveal.

That tape, recorded in 2005, was made public shortly before the 2016 election. At the time, it was seen as potentially fatal to Trump’s first White House bid.

“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women – I just start kissing them, like a magnet. Just kiss. I’m not waiting,” Trump said in that tape. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. “Grab ’em by the p—-.”

Trump’s lawyers also asked Kaplan to prevent lawyers for Carroll, 79, from showing jurors evidence of Trump’s speeches and statements when he was campaigning for president.

Carroll’s attorneys, on the other hand, are asking Kaplan in their own filings to admit the testimony of two other women, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff. They said Trump began strip-searching them in separate incidents.

Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has denied raping Carroll or sexually assaulting anyone.

Leeds said the 76-year-old Trump sexually assaulted her on a plane in 1979 after a stewardess invited him to sit next to her in first class.

Stoynoff said Trump sexually assaulted her at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005 “when she was writing a story for People Magazine about the upcoming one-year anniversary of Trump’s wedding” to Melania Trump, Carroll’s court appearance mentioned.

“Their testimony is admissible because a sexual assault is a ‘factual premise’ of Carroll’s claim, and because their testimony confirms Trump’s modus operandi of forcing himself on dissenters who are women,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote.

“Stoynoff and Leeds’ accusations against Trump, and his responses denying those accusations, are relevant evidence that he committed additional sexual assaults,” the filing said.

Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said the testimony should be suppressed under the Federal Rules of Evidence.

Habba wrote that even if it were permitted under an exception to those rules, it still should not be given to jurors because “the probative value of the testimony … does not outweigh the significant prejudice that would result in [Trump] by consenting to their union.”

Kaplan has yet to rule on dueling requests, which could affect the outcome of the trial that begins in April.

Carroll sued Trump for allegedly defaming him. She says she lied, and was motivated by money, when she wrote in a 2019 New York magazine article and a book that Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996 after a chance encounter. .

At the time of the alleged incident, Trump was married to his second wife, Marla Maples.

Carroll, in making her claims, joins at least two dozen or more women who have alleged sexual misconduct by Trump over five decades. Among them was his first wife, Ivana Trump, who during their divorce in the late 1980s alleged that he raped her. Ivana later retracted that allegation.

In his deposition for the case in October, Leeds testified about Trump’s actions on a plane.

“He was with his hands holding me, trying to kiss me, grabbing my breasts, pulling me towards him, pulling himself into me,” Leeds testified.

“Part of my brain wonders why people … in the seat behind me don’t notice that the seat is spinning and why the guy sitting across the aisle or where the hell is the stewardess isn’t saying anything,” he said. .

“When he started to put his hand up my skirt, I realized that no one was going to save me but me, and I was in the aisle, I managed to get out of the chair, and took my purse and I left. I went back to my seat back,” Leeds testimony.

A lawyer asked him: “And did Donald Trump say anything while this was going on?”

Leeds replied: “Not a word.”

“There wasn’t any sound that I remember,” he said.

According to a court filing by Carroll’s attorneys, “Years later, when Trump saw [Leeds] at a charity event, he said, ‘you’re the c— from the plane.'”

“And then Leeds came forward with his allegations [in public decades later]Trump rejected them and indicated that he too was ‘not his type,'” the filing said.

Trump also said of Carroll that he was “not my type.”

In his own recent deposition of Carroll’s lawyers, Trump repeated his claim that Carroll was not his type.

“She was not a woman I was ever attracted to,” he testified.

But at another point in his deposition, when shown a photo from 1987 of him and his then-wife Ivana Trump talking to Carroll and his then-wife, Trump identified Carroll as Maples , whom he married after divorcing Ivana.

Stoynoff, in her own deposition last October, recounted her allegations that Trump assaulted her. She testified that when she visited Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump, “I walked into the room first and I was looking around the room wondering what he wanted to show me. The room was beautiful, what did he want Show me. “

“Then I heard the door close behind me and I turned around and there he was … and he grabbed my shoulders and pushed me against this wall and started kissing me,” Stoynoff said.

Asked by a lawyer if Trump said anything when he started kissing her, Stoynoff replied, “No.”

Stoynoff testified that she was “in complete shock” from Trump’s advances, “because it was so quick and I was taken … by surprise.”

The lawyer asked: “And when you pushed him back the first time, do you remember how Donald Trump responded?”

Stoynoff said, “Yes. He just came to me again.”

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