E. Jean Carroll says former President Donald J. Trump attacked her in a department store. As the trial began, his lawyer called her lawsuit a plan to make her famous.
Follow our live coverage of E. Jean Carroll’s testimony in Trump rape case.
A lawyer for the writer E. Jean Carroll told a Manhattan jury on Tuesday that former President Donald J. Trump viciously raped her client one evening nearly 30 years ago in a department store dressing room, an assault that she said Ms. Carroll, filled with fear and shame, long had kept secret.
“The whole attack lasted just a few minutes, but it would stay with her forever,” the lawyer, Shawn G. Crowley, said in an opening statement in a trial in Federal District Court. She told the jury that the case is Ms. Carroll’s chance “to clear her name, to pursue justice and to get her life back.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, followed with an aggressive attack on Ms. Carroll, contending that her account was untrue and accusing her of exploiting her story for personal gain.
“She became a celebrity and loved every minute of it,” Mr. Tacopina said.
The lawyers’ unreconcilable characterizations came on the first day of the trial in the lawsuit by Ms. Carroll against Mr. Trump, brought under a new law in New York that allows sexual assault victims to sue the people they say abused them, even if the statute of limitations has long expired.
The trial, expected to last one to two weeks, seeks to apply the accountability of the #MeToo era to a...
In certain instances, it is evident that misinformation is created and disseminated on social media by exploiting sensitive issues and presenting unverified claims as factual events. Presented bel...