WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump held a press conference on Friday that was supposed to be about him appealing a $5 million verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.
Instead, for nearly 45 minutes, Trumpstood in front of a microphone ranting about Carroll and another woman who accused him of sexual assault, and then left without taking any questions.
“I never touched her,” Trump said of Carroll, during the New York City event. “I would have had no interest in meeting her. … She made up a story, fabricated 100%, that I attacked her.”
Without any evidence, he accused Carroll of stealing her story from an episode of a popular legal drama TV series.
“Her favorite show is ‘Law & Order,’” Trump claimed. “There’s an almost exact story as her story in ‘Law & Order’ about being attacked in the dressing room of a department store.”
“That’s her favorite show, ‘Law & Order,’” he repeated. “She said that.”
The Republican presidential nominee had just been in a federal courtroom with his lawyers, who argued that Carroll’s civil lawsuit against him in May 2023 should be overturned because it relied onimproper evidence. The jury in that case concluded that Trump had attacked Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996 and awarded her $5 million.
In Jan. 2024, a second jury awarded Carroll another $83.3 million for defamation, after Trump made derogatory comments about her when he was president. The judge in that case instructed the jury that it had to first accept the previous jury’s finding that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll.
During Friday’s remarks, in his efforts to discredit Carroll, Trump rambled his way into attacking another woman who had accused him of sexually assaulting her on an airplane decades ago.
“She said … we became very intimate,” he said, recounting her allegations, as the lawyers standing behind him began looking uncomfortable. “She said I was making out with her. And then after 15 minutes … that I grabbed her at a certain part, and that was when she had enough.”
Trump scoffed that this could have happened on a commercial flight.
“I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening?” he said, adding, “I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say, but it couldn’t have happened, and … she would not have been the chosen one.”
Before leaving the event and ignoring questions shouted at him by reporters, Trump blamed his legal team for failing him in his 2023 trial.
“I’m disappointed in my legal talent, to be honest with you,” he said, as some of his lawyers stood next to him. “I wanted to show up to the first trial. My lawyer, who is not up here, not with us any longer, said, ‘Sir, you should not show up.’”
HuffPost used to keep a running tally of all the women who have publicly accused Trump of sexual assault or rape. We may have lost track after the numbers surpassed two dozen.
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
