Donald Trump’s deposition videotape is performed on a big display screen, proper, for the jury, decrease left, with Decide Lewis Kaplan presiding in Manhattan federal courtroom on Wednesday. (Elizabeth Williams by way of AP)
NEW YORK CITY — Throughout his October deposition as a part of the rape and defamation trial introduced towards him by the author E. Jean Carroll, former President Donald Trump advised prosecution legal professionals that “stars” like him had, “sadly or fortuitously,” traditionally been permitted to hold out undesirable sexual assault.
That videotaped deposition was performed for the jury Thursday on the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in decrease Manhattan. In it, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan learn a portion of the now notorious off-the-cuff remarks Trump made to the “Entry Hollywood” co-host Billy Bush in 2005.
“I simply begin kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Simply kiss. I don’t even wait. And if you’re a star, they allow you to do it. You are able to do something. Seize them by the pussy,” Kaplan stated on the video, repeating Trump’s personal phrases, earlier than asking him to elaborate.
“Traditionally, that’s true with stars,” Trump responded in the course of the deposition. “Should you look during the last million years, that’s what’s been largely true of the celebs — sadly or fortuitously.”
Kaplan adopted up by asking Trump, who has denied all allegations of sexual impropriety made towards him by a number of ladies, if he thought of himself a star.
“I feel I can say that, yeah,” Trump stated.
Carroll alleges that Trump raped her in a altering room at Bergdorf Goodman division retailer within the mid-Nineties, and Kaplan additionally requested Trump, who just isn’t anticipated to testify in his personal protection in the course of the trial, about his quip that Carroll was “not my kind.”
E. Jean Carroll arrives at federal courtroom in New York on Tuesday. (AP Photograph/Seth Wenig)
Trump responded that he had the “proper to be insulting” given the accusation of rape, earlier than telling Kaplan, “You wouldn’t be a alternative of mine both, if I’m being trustworthy. I hope you’re not offended.”
Kaplan pressed Trump on his assertion that he had no thought who Carroll was and that he had by no means met her. She confirmed Trump a photograph taken at a charity occasion that featured Trump, his spouse on the time, Ivana, Carroll and her then-husband.
“I don’t know who the girl is,” Trump initially says of Carroll, earlier than including, “It’s Marla [Maples, his second wife]. That’s Marla, yeah, that’s my spouse.”
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Later, Kaplan requested Trump, “I take it the ladies you’ve married are your ‘kind’?”
“Yeah,” Trump responded.
Kaplan additionally questioned Trump about an Oct. 12, 2022, assertion by which he claimed that Carroll stated he “swooned her.”
“She indicated that she cherished it,” Trump stated within the deposition.
All through the deposition, Trump, whose protection crew introduced Wednesday that they might not name a single witness within the case, maintained his innocence.
“I’ve had a number of hoaxes performed on me, that is one among them,” Trump stated. “This ridiculous state of affairs is a giant fats hoax.”