When she ran the mail section in the magazine She, E. Jean Carroll always advised readers to notify the police in the event of a sexual assault. She didn’t follow her own good advice. “I’m not as smart as I think I am”, she summed up with a formula, before the jurors of a federal court in New York. On Wednesday April 26, the latter heard at length the former columnist, now 79 years old, who delivered with emotion the story of the rape of which she accuses Donald Trump, in the context of civil proceedings. A story that she had confided to two friends, following the facts that she places towards the end of 1995 or the beginning of 1996, before walling herself in silence for more than twenty years. The ex-president is not attending the trial and is not expected to testify.
At the time, Donald Trump was a real estate mogul and regular in the tabloids. E. Jean Carroll came across him by chance in front of the luxury store Bergdorf Goodman, on the Ve Avenue, not far from the Trump Tower. It was, in his eyes, “such a funny New York scene”, according to comments reported by several American newspapers, present at the hearing. Donald Trump would have called her “The Lady of Advice” and allegedly asked her for help buying a gift of clothing for another woman. “I was flirting the whole time, probably”she admits.
After exchanging jokes, the columnist says she entered a fitting room, followed by the entrepreneur. With all his weight, he would have pressed her against the wall, would have lowered her pantyhose, introduced his fingers into her vagina and then her sex. “This is going to sound weird to you, I didn’t mean to make a scene”she said, seized with regret, questioned about her lack of warning cries. “I always wonder why I entered, to find myself in this situationshe added in front of the jurors. And I’m proud to say that I got through it. I lifted my knee, and pushed it away. » E. Jean Carroll explained that she had never had sex with a man since. “Long story short, it’s because Donald Trump raped me. » Sobbing often, the writer explained that she was trying to “ get his life back”.
Financial and political stake
This trial takes place in civil proceedings, a legal possibility open to victims when the alleged facts have already been prescribed for a long time. The immediate stake is financial but also political for Donald Trump, whose relations with women have fueled repeated scandals over the decades. He can count on the loyalty of his activist base MAGA (“Make America Great Again”), which ensures him a place as the big favorite in the polls for the Republican primary, before the presidential election of 2024. But if the court recognizes his guilt, at the end of the trial scheduled to last between one and two weeks, he will would act as a new blow to his sulphurous reputation, accentuating the repulsive effect of his candidacy with a majority of the American electorate.
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