May 8 (UPI) — The attorney for E. Jean Carroll gave an impassioned closing argument in her federal lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, saying she gave “courageous” testimony against a powerful businessman who has sexually assaulted other women the same way.
The jury of six men and three women is considering Carroll’s defamation and battery claims, along with potential monetary damages.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan said Carroll, a columnist for Elle magazine at the time of the encounter in the 1990s, charged that Trump raped her client in the pattern he bragged about in private in the Access Hollywood tapes before his 2016 election. Those tapes were later made public.
Kaplan told the jury this is not a “he said, she said” case of dueling views of the same incident rather it is confirmed by the people Carroll confided in after the incident and other women who said the former president assaulted them in the same way.
“Three different women, decades apart, but one single pattern of behavior,” Kaplan told the jury. “In that respect, what happened to E. Jean Carroll is not unique.”
Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff testified in Carroll’s trial that they were similarly sexually assaulted by Trump.
Kaplan then pointed to the Access Hollywood tape that nearly derailed Trump’s 2016 presidential bid, in which he described a crass treatment of women that the former president and his supporters later described simply as boastful locker-room talk.
“What is Donald Trump doing here?” Kaplan said. “He’s telling you in his own words how he treats women. It’s his modus operandi.”
Trump, who opted not to testify in his own defense, has denied the incident happened and that he does not know Carroll. His attorneys had tried to poke holes in Carroll’s story, pointing to her testimony that she could not recall the date the incident took place and did not pursue legal action at the time.
Trump’s attorneys are expected to give their closing arguments Monday afternoon before the jury receives instructions and begins deliberation.
Attorneys for Carroll and Trump rested their cases last Thursday, with U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan giving Trump until Sunday to reconsider his decision not to testify and reopening the case. Trump, while playing golf in Europe last week, suggested he would fly back to face his accusers.
