E Jean Carroll, the ex-Elle columnist who sued former President Donald Trump for defamation after he called her a liar and denied claims of sexual assault, testified Wednesday that her life has been shattered by the events and that she has been constantly hounded by his supporters.
Trump has continued to deny the sexual assault charges even though he was found liable last year. He has claimed that he never met Carroll, said she was “not my type,” and accused her of using his name to sell books and gain notoriety.
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The jury’s only task will be to decide how much money Trump has to pay Carroll for mocking her claims while he was president of the United States and for remarks he made after a different jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation in 2023.
Even though the former president and Republican front-runner has been instructed to rein in his rhetoric ahead of the trial, he has taken to his social media platform, Truth Social, to blast the proceedings. He also showed up to court, even though he was not required to, and sat two rows behind Carroll. He could be heard responding to Carroll’s testimony, which earned him a warning from Judge Lewis Kaplan, according to reports from the courtroom.
Carroll spent more than an hour on the stand Wednesday morning, telling the nine-person jury about how the former commander in chief’s comments ripped her reputation.
“To have the President of the United States, one of the most powerful persons on Earth, calling me a liar for three days and saying I’m a liar 26 times — I counted them — it ended the world that I had been living in,” Carroll responded as Trump sat at the defense table. “And I entered a new world. I was attacked. I was attacked on Twitter, I was attacked on Facebook, I was attacked in news blogs, I was attacked, brutally attacked, in messages.”
Carroll, 80, told jurors she spent “50 years building a reputation as a magazine and magazine journalist” but that Trump shredded her reputation with his comments.
“Previously, I was known simply as a journalist, and now I’m known as a liar, a fraud, and a wack job,” she said, adding that Trump’s attacks against her have not softened.
“He has continued to lie,” she said. “He lied last month. He lied on Sunday. He lied yesterday.”
Carroll’s attorneys shared some of the messages Trump’s supporters had sent Carroll, including one that called her a “lying old hag” and another that read “shame on you and your lying I-hate-Trump story.”
Carroll testified that she gets hundreds of threatening messages a day, some even calling for her death.
Carroll’s voice cracked as she described a violent message she received after the trial last year:
“I apologize to the people in the audience because when a woman sees the words, we can’t help but think of the image,” she said, reading the email. “And so he wants me to stick a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. And I imagine many of us now can picture that.”
Trump was leaning over, talking to his lawyer, when Carroll read the messages.
The 2024 Republican front-runner returned to New York to attend the hearing following a Tuesday night rally in New Hampshire. The former president has been toggling between the campaign trail and the courtroom.
This week’s trial is the second defamation case Carroll has brought against Trump. In May, a jury found him liable of sexual assault and defamation. Carroll said he raped her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman, an upscale department store in Manhattan.
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She came forward with her account in 2019 when an excerpt from her book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal was published in New York magazine.
Trump’s attorneys have indicated he may take the stand in his defense.
