Trump’s Lawyer Spars With E. Jean Carroll Over Rape Accusation
In a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday, a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump asked E. Jean Carroll, the writer who has accused Mr. Trump of raping her nearly three decades ago, whether she had screamed for help.
“I’m not a screamer,” Ms. Carroll responded, adding that she was in a panic during the encounter in a dressing room. “I was fighting,” she said. “You can’t beat up on me for not screaming.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said he was not doing that, but Ms. Carroll, her voice rising, said from the witness stand that women often keep silent about an attack because they fear being asked what they could have done to stop it. “They are always asked, ‘Why didn’t you scream?’” Ms. Carroll said.
“I’m telling you, he raped me, whether I screamed or not,” she declared.
The highly charged exchange came as Ms. Carroll underwent hours of cross-examination by Mr. Tacopina, who made it clear he was seeking to undermine her testimony about what she says was a vicious attack by Mr. Trump after they ran into each other at the Bergdorf Goodman store on Fifth Avenue in the mid-1990s.
Source: The New York Times
