Carroll also accused former CBS Chief Les Moonves of rape, but she didn't bring a lawsuit against him because she said, "he'd just deny it." In this latest case brought by Carroll, she accused Trump of defaming her when he denied the attack.
The jury did not find the president liable for "rape" but thought he might have been liable for an attack of some sort. As a result, she brought another cause of action against the president, accusing him of defaming her for denying that the rape happened.
Trump does what he usually does. He went on offense. The left-wing
Independent described the messages Trump put on Truth Social that he subsequently took down. They are the same messages the jury thought were worth $65 million in punitive damages.
[clip]
Initially, she said in print that the year was 1994. The problem was that Donna Karan didn't make the dress until one or two years after she said the attack occurred. So Carroll changed the date of the alleged attack. The media were fine with it.
When it was pointed out that her "attack" was the exact same storyline as a "rape fantasy" role-playing subplot of a 2012 "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" episode, she claimed never to have seen the show. She was asked about it on the stand during the May 2023 trial. Here's how the
New York Post reported the awkward colloquy.
The 79-year-old former journalist testified she was “aware” of the episode but, “I haven’t seen it.”
A brief moment of the episode — titled “Theatre and Tricks” — involves a character talking about role-playing a rape fantasy in Bergdorf Goodman.
“Role-play took place in the dressing room of Bergdorf’s. While she was trying on lingerie I would burst in,” the
Carroll, in her lawsuit, claims that the former commander-in-chief raped her in a fitting room in the lingerie section of the Fifth Avenue department store most likely in 1996.
Trump, 76, denies the allegations.
Hearing the parallels between what allegedly happened to her and the line in the show “was amazing to me,” Carroll told jurors.
“An amazing coincidence?” Tacopina asked.
“Yes, it’s astonishing,” Carroll said.
Simply astonishing that a jury would give this weirdo the time of day, you mean.
And in last May's civil trial, Carroll was caught in another lie when she claimed to have fronted all the money for her case, but the money was given by a shadowy political group that was funded in part by a name you've heard recently: Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn.