Donald Trump has launched a fresh broadside against his civil trial for rape and defamation, calling the case a disgrace.
The former president said on Thursday he would probably attend the trial in New York but called it a political attack built on false claims by the accuser, the writer E Jean Carroll.
“I have to go back for a woman that made a false accusation about me and I have a judge who’s extremely hostile,” he told reporters while playing golf at a resort he owns in Doonbeg, County Clare, on the west coast of Ireland.
“I’m going to go back, and I’m going to confront this woman. This woman is a disgrace and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen in our country.”
However, Trump’s lawyer in court, Joe Tacopina, said he is still not expected to attend the trial or testify.
Trump repeated previous assertions that Carroll was a Democrat who invented the story to sell a memoir.
“I have no idea who she is,” he claimed. “It’s ridiculous. She made a claim, she wrote a book, she made a claim.”
Carroll accuses Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. She is also suing for defamation after Trump accused her of lying when she went public with her account of the alleged assault in 2019.
Trump claimed the case was an attempt to derail his bid to recapture the White House in 2024, but said that in polls he remained ahead of Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis, a possible challenger for the Republican nomination.
“This is a political attack. This is the only way they think they can win the election because they’re losing,” he said.
Asked if he was confident of winning the election, Trump replied: “I could win it three times.” He also accused Biden of incompetence and frailty. After hitting his first drive on the course, Trump said: “You think Biden can do that? I don’t think so. Biden doesn’t hit a 280 right down the middle, does he? Biden can’t hit an 80 down the middle.”
Trump wore a Make America Great Again hat and was accompanied by his son Eric. They are to return to the US on Thursday after a three-day visit to Trump’s golf resorts in Scotland and Ireland.
In New York, the jury hearing Carroll’s lawsuit watched a recording of Trump’s deposition ahead of the trial. At one point, presented with a photograph, the former president confused a former wife for the woman suing him for alleged rape.
The picture featured Carroll, Trump and their spouses of the time. The former president looked at Carroll in the photograph and mistook her for his second wife, Marla Maples.
“That’s Marla. Yeah, that’s my wife,” he said.
Carroll’s lawyer pointed out that it was her client.
Trump replied: “It’s very blurry.”
The former president repeated his assertion that Carroll was “not my type”. He said the same about another witness, Jessica Leeds, who has testified that Trump sexually assaulted her on a plane in 1979. Then he said the same, unprompted, about Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.
“You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either, to be honest. I hope you’re not offended,” he told the lawyer.
He also accused Kaplan of being a “political operative” against him.
Trump was asked what he meant when he said on social media Carroll claimed he had “swooned” her.
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“It’s a nicer word than the other word that starts with an F,” he said.
In the deposition, the president was played the famous Access Hollywood tape, which emerged during the 2016 election and in which he boasts about kissing and groping women without their consent.
He was heard to say: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women. I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.” He added: “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.”
Asked by Kaplan about the comments, Trump shrugged them off.
“Well, historically, that’s true with stars,” he said. “If you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true. Not always, but largely true, unfortunately or fortunately.”
Later on Thursday, one of Carroll’s close friends, Carol Martin, testified that the advice columnist told her about the alleged assault shortly after it occurred. Martin, a former television anchor, said Carroll invited herself over and the pair discussed the alleged attack.
She said the advice columnist was “clearly agitated, anxious” as she described the alleged attack in a department store dressing room.
“She didn’t use the word rape that I recall,” said Martin.
Martin said she advised Carroll to keep quiet.
“I just volunteered that she shouldn’t do anything, because it was Donald Trump and he had a lot of attorneys and he would just bury her,” she said. “I have questioned myself more than once over the years why I told her that. I’m not proud.”
Martin said she “kept the covenant” not to talk about what Carroll told her for many years, until the advice columnist went public with her accusations in 2019.
Martin’s testimony backed that of another Carroll friend, Lisa Birnbach, who testified earlier this week that the advice columnist called her, “breathless, hyperventilating, emotional”, shortly after the alleged attack. Birnbach told Carroll she had been raped and should go to the police. Instead, Carroll followed Martin’s advice.
Trump’s lawyers have attempted to paint Carroll’s failure to report the alleged rape at the time as evidence that it did not happen.
The trial continues.
