WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump held a news conference Friday to discuss his appeal of a $5 million verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.
Instead, for nearly 45 minutes, Trump stood at a microphone and railed against Carroll and another woman who had accused him of sexual assault, then left without answering a single question.
“I never touched her,” Trump said of Carroll at the New York City event. “I would have had no interest in meeting her. … She made up a story, 100 percent made up, that I assaulted her.”
Without any evidence, he accused Carroll of her story stolen from an episode of a popular legal drama series.
“Her favorite show is ‘Law & Order,’” Trump claimed. “There’s an almost exact story as her story on ‘Law & Order’ about being attacked in a department store dressing room.”
“That’s her favorite show, ‘Law & Order,’” he repeated. “That’s what she said.”
The Republican presidential candidate was in a federal courtroom with his lawyers, who argued that Carroll’s May 2023 civil lawsuit against him should be thrown out because it was based on faulty evidence. The jury in that case found that Trump assaulted Carroll in a 1996 dressing room at a luxury department store and awarded her $5 million.
In January 2024, a second jury awarded Carroll another $83.3 million for defamation, after Trump made disparaging comments about her while he was president. The judge in that case instructed the jury that it must first accept the previous jury’s finding that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll.
During his speech on Friday, Trump attempted to discredit Carroll by attacking another woman who had accused him of sexually assaulting her on a plane decades ago.
“She said… we got very intimate,” he said, repeating her claims as attorneys stood behind him started to look uncomfortable. “She said I was kissing her. And then after 15 minutes… I grabbed her at one point, and that’s when she had enough.”
Trump laughed and said 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 horrible thing to say, but it couldn’t have happened, and … she wouldn’t have been the chosen one.”
Before leaving the event and ignoring questions from reporters, Trump blamed his legal team for failing him during his 2023 trial.
“I’m disappointed in my legal talent, to be honest,” he said, as several of his attorneys stood beside him. “I wanted to be at the first trial. My attorney, who is no longer here, no longer with us, said, ‘Sir, you can’t show up.'”
HuffPost has been keeping a running tally of all the women who have publicly accused Trump of sexual assault or rape. We may have lost count after the numbers topped two dozen.
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Online Helpline for Sexual Abuse or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center website.
