Editor’s Note: This article contains depictions of sexual assault.
Federal judge in New York on Friday refused the effort By former President Donald Trump’s attorney his deposition in a lawsuit by a writer who accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s.
Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in an order in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that Trump’s claim to keep the nearly 30-page deposition sealed was “absolutely unfounded.”
The deposition includes Trump making derogatory comments about the author who is suing him, E. Jean Carroll, her attorney, and President Joe Biden, as well as false allegations made about him. He indicated that he was complaining about what he called a series of “hoaxes.”
Deposition taken by Carroll’s attorney at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Oct. 19.
Earlier Friday, Kaplan filed one of two lawsuits filed against him by Carroll, who says Trump raped her in the changing rooms of Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store more than 20 years ago. Denied Trump’s offer to dismiss it.
Kaplan said in his order to unseal Trump that he had no right to keep his testimony confidential when he testified. The judge noted that there are putative rights held by the public to court documents.
Contrary to Trump’s allegations, the judge said that some of his transcripts, redacted in filings made public by Carroll’s attorneys, should be used for additional discovery in Carroll’s second lawsuit. , added that it was “directly related” to the disagreements between those lawyers and him.
Kaplan first ordered the unsealed copies on Monday. But after Trump’s lawyers asked him for three days to submit arguments against the opening, he overturned the order.
While in office, Trump publicly accused Carroll of fabricating the rape allegations, saying she was motivated by politics and a desire to sell a book containing her allegations.
Carroll then sued him for defamation.
She sued him again in November when Trump made what she said were other defamatory statements about her in a social media post he wrote in October. The second lawsuit is also a permitted claim under new New York law that allows adults a one-year grace period to file a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse that occurred outside the time allowed by the statute of limitations.
A trial in the lawsuit is scheduled for April.
“That’s a false accusation,” Trump said in a deposition, according to newly released transcripts. “Never happened, never will happen.”
“Once this is over, I will sue her. That’s what I’m really looking forward to.
“And I will sue you too.”
During his deposition, Trump was questioned about referring to the “Bergdorf Goodman case” he posted on his social media sites on Oct. 12, calling it a “complete fraud.”
This post refers to an interview with Carol from June 2019. CNN’s Anderson Cooper It explains her explanation of the alleged sexual assault. She said it happened after she happened to meet her Trump while she was shopping, and he allegedly asked her to help him buy a present for her “girl.”
“She completely made up the story that I met her at the door of this crowded New York City department store and within minutes I ‘passed out’ her,” Trump wrote, Kaplan said. pointed out in the question.
In a deposition, Trump confirmed that Kaplan read it, and said the rest of the post was accurate, saying, “Great statement, yeah, true, true.”
“I wrote it all myself,” he added.
When asked if he had spoken to anyone about what he should say in his post, Trump replied, “No, I didn’t have to. I’m not Joe Biden.”
Trump called Carroll a “silly job” during the deposition.
“I think she’s sick, mentally ill,” he said.
Kaplan then asked him about his use of the word “fainting,” which she called “a strange word.”
“What do you mean ‘passed out’?” the lawyer asked.
“It’s probably going to be a word, accurate or not, that has to do with talking to her, talking to her, taking actions that she said didn’t happen,” Trump said. ‘ he replied.
“It’s a better word than the one that starts with F. I thought it would be inappropriate to use another word, so that’s what I used,” Trump said. “And it didn’t happen.”
When Kaplan said the dictionary defined “fainting” as “to pass out with extreme emotion,” Trump said, “Well, that’s like what she said I did to her.” replied.
“She passed out with emotion. ‘She actually showed that she loved it. OK?'” he said, referring to Carroll’s CNN interview.
“She loved it until the commercial was over,” Trump said. “Actually, I thought you said she was sexy, right? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”
Kaplan then asked if Trump testified that Carroll “told you that he liked to be sexually assaulted.”
Mr Trump replied: I think she said in an interview with Anderson Cooper that rape is sexy, but it’s not.”
“But I think she said rape is sexy,” he added.
In fact, Carroll said in that interview that she believes “most people” find rape “sexy”.
In that interview, Carroll said she “panked” when Trump closed the locker room door, pushed her against the wall, and started kissing her before pulling down her tights.
“And it was against my will. And it hurt. And it was a fight,” Carroll said in an interview.
She later said in the same interview, “I wasn’t thrown to the ground and raped. The word ‘rape’ has so many sexual connotations.” “
“It wasn’t sexual, it just hurt,” Carroll said.
Cooper replied, “I think most people think of rape as … violent assault.”
Carroll said afterwards, “I think most people think rape is sexy.”
When her lawyer Kaplan asked Trump if it was true that Carroll said that rape is sexy is what many other people see, he said rape means sexy or something like that. Like I said, you should watch the interview.
Later in the deposition, Trump said he made what he called a “politically incorrect statement” about Carroll in a social media post.
“She’s not my type,” Trump told Kaplan. “She’s not the woman I’m attracted to,” he added later.
“She’s accusing me of raping a woman I don’t know who she is,” Trump said.
“And you know that’s not true either,” he told Kaplan. “You’re a political operative too. You’re a disgrace.”
He later suggested that Kaplan had some influence over the judge to give him permission to remove him from the case.
“I knew I was going to waste a whole day, a whole day, on this,” Trump said. “To get this kind of time, you have to be connected. It takes me a whole day to do it.”
Kaplan pointed out that Trump said in a social media post that Carroll’s allegations were “a hoax and a lie, just like every other hoax that has been put against me in the last seven years.”
When a lawyer asked if Carroll fabricated his allegations, Trump replied, “absolutely, 100 percent.” He admitted to using the term “hoax” a lot.
“I’ve had a lot of hoaxes, and this is one of them,” Trump said.
When asked what some of them were, Trump replied, “Russia Russia Russian hoax … Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine hoax.”
He pointed to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.
Trump also said his use of mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden, was a hoax.
“I think they’re very dishonest. Mail-in ballots are very dishonest,” Trump said.
Asked by Kaplan if he had voted by mail, Trump responded to the objections of his own attorney, Alina Habba.
“I will. I will,” Trump said. “Sometimes I do. But I don’t know what will happen once I give it. I don’t know.”
