Donald Trump has decided not to testify in the trial of a New York author’s lawsuit claiming he raped her in the 1990s, sparing the former president a grilling on the witness box.
Mr Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina told US district judge Lewis Kaplan of his client’s decision after the jury left for the day on Tuesday afternoon, the fifth day of the trial of E Jean Carroll’s lawsuit claiming sexual assault and defamation.
“It’s his call,” the judge said. “I understand that. You understand that. He understands that, right?”
“Yes,” Mr Tacopina said, without elaborating.
Contacted later, the defence lawyer said Mr Trump’s denial of Ms Carroll’s claims are already on the record in his videotaped deposition, portions of which will be played for the jury.
Whether Mr Trump would attend the trial, let alone testify in it, had been hanging over the proceedings since a deadline for Mr Tacopina to reveal his client’s decision came and went last week. Defendants in such civil trials aren’t required to attend, though declining to take the stand can sometimes work against them if jurors expect to hear them respond to the claims.
Earlier, a close friend of Ms Carroll told the New York jury she received a distressed call from the advice columnist within minutes of Donald Trump allegedly raping her.
Lisa Birnbach testified at Ms Carroll’s civil action against the former president on Tuesday that she was feeding her children at home when Ms Carroll called “breathless, hyperventilating, emotional” in spring 1996.
“She said: ‘Lisa, you’re not going to believe what happened to me’,” Ms Birnbach said.
The magazine writer and editor described Ms Carroll giving a brief description of meeting Mr Trump at the entrance to the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman and how they decided to shop together. Ms Birnbach said Ms Carroll described Trump pinning her to a changing room wall and assaulting her.
“E Jean said to me many times, ‘He pulled down my tights, he pulled down my tights,’ almost like she couldn’t believe it had just happened to her,” she said.
Ms Birnbach said Ms Carroll described the assault. .
“As soon as she said that, even though I knew my children didn’t know the word, I ducked out of the room and I whispered, ‘E Jean, he raped you, you should go to the police.’ She said: ‘No, no I don’t want to go to the police.’ I said: ‘He raped you. I’ll take you to the police,’” Ms Birnbach recounted.
Ms Birnbach said Ms Carroll was adamant.
“She said, ‘Promise me you will never speak of this again and promise me you will tell no one,’” Ms Birnbach testified. “And I promised both of those things.”
Ms Carroll (79), is suing Trump for battery, and for defamation for calling her a liar after she went public about the alleged assault in 2019.
Ms Birnbach is one of two women expected to testify that the advice columnist told them about the alleged assault shortly after it occurred. MsBirnbach said she was stunned when Ms Carroll described going into the dressingroom with Mr Trump.
“I was surprised that she did that,” Ms Birnbach said. “I thought it was kind of nutty.”
But Ms Birnbach added that she did not think at the time that Trump was dangerous.
The court also heard dramatic testimony from a businesswoman, Jessica Leeds, who said Trump grabbed her breast and attempted to put his hand up her skirt on a flight in 1979.
Ms Leeds is one of two women the judge has ruled can give evidence about the former president’s alleged sexual assaults. She told the jury she was seated next to Trump on a flight to New York. After chatting for a while and eating dinner, he suddenly “decided to kiss me and grope me”.
“He was trying to kiss me. He was trying to pull me towards him. He was grabbing my breasts. It was like he had 40 million hands.
“It was when he started putting his hand up my skirt, that gave me a jolt of strength.”
Ms Leeds said she was able to pull away and fled to the back of the plane. She went public with her account of the alleged attack weeks before the 2016 presidential election, after Mr Trump denied having sexually assaulted women.
Ms Leeds said she saw Mr Trump three years later, when she was volunteering at a Humane Society event.
“He looked at me and he said, ‘I remember you, you’re that c**t from the airplane,’” Ms Leeds said. “It was like a bucket of cold water thrown over my head.”
But Birnbach’s remained the most significant testimony of the day.
One of the questions that has hung over the trial was why Ms Carroll chose to call Birnbach immediately after the alleged assault when the two were no more than “work friends”, though they now describe themselves as very close.
Ms Birnbach said she believed it was because a few months earlier she visited Mr Trump to write an article about his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Ms Birnbach said she met Trump at a party in 1995, and he asked if she would be interested in seeing Mar-a-Lago.
“He called me about once a month for five or six months to make sure I still wanted to write the article,” she said.
Mr Trump flew Ms Birnbach down on his jet in January 1996 and she stayed two nights while he gave her a personal tour. The article was published the following month.
“I believe E Jean called me, of all her friends and acquaintances, because she knew I had just been at Mar-a-Lago,” she said.
Ms Birnbach said she never spoke to Carroll about the assault again until the advice columnist went public with her allegations in 2019.
“It was her life, her story, not my story. She clearly didn’t want to tell anyone what happened and I honoured that,” she said.
Ms Birnbach said she “worked not to think about it”.
“I buried it,” she said. “As life went on, it was easier not to think about it.”
Ms Birnbach acknowledged that she has been a vocal opponent of Mr Trump, calling him an “infection”, a “madman”, a “Russian agent” and a “malignant sociopath”. She acknowledged feeling “hatred”.
Asked why she was testifying, Mr Birnbach said: “I’m here because I’m her friend and I want the world to know she’s telling the truth.”
Later on Tuesday, a clinical psychologist, Dr Leslie Lebowitz, began testifying as to Ms Carroll’s state of mind following the alleged rape.
Dr Lebowitz said Ms Carroll had been harmed in three main ways, including suffering from “painful intrusive memories” and suffering a “diminishment” in how she thinks and feels about herself.
Perhaps most prominently, Dr Lebowitz said, Ms Carroll “manifests avoidance syndromes” that have stopped her having a romantic life.
The trial continues. – Agencies