A US court heard closing arguments Monday in a closely watched civil trial that accuses ex-president Donald Trump of raping and defaming an American former magazine columnist.
Lawyers for accuser E. Jean Carroll urged the nine-person jury to find Trump liable for the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store in the mid-1990s.
“No one, not even a former president, is above the law,” attorney Roberta Kaplan told the Manhattan federal court.
Carroll, 79, sued Trump last year, alleging that he raped her in the changing room of the luxury Bergdorf Goodman store on Fifth Avenue in either late 1995 or early 1996.
The former columnist for Elle magazine also claims that Trump defamed her when he called her “a complete con job” after she went public with the allegation in 2019.
Trump has not been criminally prosecuted and has repeatedly denied the allegations, often referring to Carroll as “not my type.”
“The truth is,” Carroll “was exactly his type,” Kaplan said to the jurors who will begin deliberating on Tuesday.
Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said in the defense’s closing arguments that there was no evidence an assault occurred and accused Carroll of wanting to derail Trump’s 2024 White House race.
He asked the jury to use their “common sense,” saying that if Trump had raped Carroll in a public place, then he would have been “immediately arrested.”
Carroll’s suit seeks unspecified damages for “significant pain and suffering, lasting psychological and pecuniary harms, loss of dignity and self-esteem, and invasion of her privacy.” It also asks that Trump retract his comments.
During the two-week trial, the court heard from Carroll and two other women who claimed they had been sexually assaulted by Trump decades ago.
