Carroll said she kept silent for fear Trump would retaliate, out of shame and because she worried that people would see her as somewhat responsible for being attacked. She never called police or noted it in her diary. “I always think back to why I walked in there to get myself in that situation,” she testified, her voice breaking, “but I’m proud to say I did get out.”

Carroll said she ultimately pushed him off with her knee and immediately left the store. To her, it seemed like comedy, something like her 1986 “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which a man admires himself in a mirror.īut then, she said, Trump slammed the door, pinned her against a wall, planted his mouth on hers, yanked her tights down and raped her as she tried to break away. They took an impromptu jaunt to the lingerie department so he could search for a women’s gift and soon were teasing each other about trying on a skimpy bodysuit, Carroll testified. Trump has said he doesn’t remember it.Īccording to Carroll, she ended up in a dressing room with Trump after they ran into each other at Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified Thursday evening in spring 1996. Trump denies wrongdoing in all of those matters.Ĭarroll, who penned an Elle magazine advice column for 27 years, has also written for magazines and “Saturday Night Live.” She and Trump were in social circles that overlapped at a 1987 party, where a photo documented them and their then-spouses interacting. Trump is also contending with investigations into his possible mishandling of classified documents, his actions after the 2020 election and his activities during the insurrection at the U.S. The state attorney general has sued him, his family and his business over alleged financial wrongdoing. He’s fighting a New York criminal case related to hush money payments made to a porn actor. The verdict comes as Trump faces an accelerating swirl of legal risks.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll, Leeds and Stoynoff have done. The six-man, three-woman jury also saw the well-known 2005 “Access Hollywood” hot-mic recording of Trump talking about kissing and grabbing women without asking. Jurors also heard from Jessica Leeds, a former stockbroker who testified that Trump abruptly groped her against her will on an airline flight in the 1970s, and from Natasha Stoynoff, a writer who said Trump forcibly kissed her against her will while she was interviewing him for a 2005 article.

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