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(NEW YORK) — A New York City jury is set to begin deliberations Tuesday in a civil trial over claims by counsel columnist E. Jean Carroll that Donald Trump raped her at a luxury Manhattan department store on 1996.
US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan will read legal instructions to the nine-person jury for about an hour before jurors begin deliberating on the civil claims of battery and defamation.
If they believe Carroll, jurors can award compensatory and punitive damages. Trump, who did not attend the trial, insisted that he never sexually assaulted Carroll or met her.
Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, told the jury in closing arguments Monday that Carroll’s story was too far-fetched to be believed. He said he did so to fuel sales of a 2019 memoir in which he first went public with his claims and to discredit Trump for political reasons.
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan cited excerpts from Trump’s October deposition and his well-known comments in a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which he said celebrities can prey on women between the legs without asking.
He urged jurors to believe his client.
“He didn’t even bother to show up here in person,” Kaplan said, referring to Trump’s absence from court during the trial’s two weeks. He said much of what he said in his deposition and in public statements “actually supports our side of the case.”
“In a very real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself,” he said. “He knows what he did. He knew that he had sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll.”
Read More: The Key Investigations Into Donald Trump
Carroll, 79, testified that he had a chance encounter with Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman store across the street from Trump Tower. She said it was a light-hearted interaction in which they teased each other about trying on a piece of underwear before Trump turned violent inside a dressing room.
Tacopina told jurors there was no reason to call Trump as a witness when Carroll could not remember when his encounter with Trump occurred.
He told the jury that Carroll made his statements after hearing about a 2012 episode of “Law and Order” in which a woman was raped in the dressing room of the lingerie section of a Bergdorf Goodman store.
“They modeled their secret technique on an episode of one of the most popular shows on television,” he said of Carroll.
Two of Carroll’s friends testified that he told them about the encounter with Trump shortly after it happened, years before the “Law and Order” episode aired.
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