Two witnesses intended to bolster E. Jean Carroll's sexual assault allegations against former President Donald Trump testified in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.
Carroll told the jury that she phoned a friend, author and journalist Lisa Birnbach, immediately after being raped by Trump at a Bergdorf Goodman department store fitting room in the 1990s.
"I am here because my friend, my good friend, who is a good person, told me something terrible that happened to her, and, as a result, she lost her employment and her life became very, very difficult," Birnbach said from the witness stand on the fifth day of the trial.
"I want the world to know that she was telling the truth," she added.
Birnbach's testimony follows two days of Caroll's cross-examination by Trump attorney Joe Tacopina. Tacopina on Tuesday told the judge that Trump would not be testifying in his own defense. Trump, who has denied Carroll's accusations, has not been present in court for the trial.
Birnbach testified that it was spring of 1996 when Carroll called her, and that she had been in her kitchen feeding her children dinner, per The New York Times.
"She said, 'Lisa, you are not going to believe what happened to me,'" Birnbarch recalled.
Birnbach added that she went into another room so that she could whisper to her friend — who sounded "breathless, hyperventilating, emotional" — that she should contact the authorities. Carroll, Birnbach said, stated that she would not go to the police, and asked Birnbach to never speak of the alleged assault. Birnbach added that she had never spoken about the incident openly since then, until 2019.
The New York Times reported that Trump lawyer W. Perry Brandt made a point to single out Birnbach's political preference during cross-examination, calling the jury's attention to the fact that Birnbach, a Democrat, made previous campaign donations to both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
Another witness, retired stockbroker Jessica Leeds, took the stand on Tuesday to recount her own experience of being groped by the ex-president on an airplane in 1979.
The Washington Post reported that Leeds told jurors Trump groped her and tried to push his hand up her skirt after she was moved to first class on a flight. Leeds also claimed that Trump tried to kiss her and force her towards him against her will.
"There was no conversation," she testified. "It was like out of the blue."
Leeds said she ran into Trump and his pregnant wife Ivana during a Humane Society gala in 1981.
"I remember you. You're that c**t from the airplane," she recalled him saying.
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Former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner wrote in a Daily Beast op-ed that Birnbach's testimony was "detailed and unequivocal," adding that the cross-examination "did not move her story, at all" as she pushed back on suggestions that she was politically motivated to testify against the former president.
Epner added that Leeds' story about running into Trump years later was a "final twist of the knife."
"In the end, this trial may be like 'the sound of one hand clapping,'" Epner wrote. "E. Jean Carroll will have testified to being raped by Donald Trump. She will have presented numerous corroborating witnesses. Donald Trump will have presented no evidence on his own behalf, instead relying on the jurors to not believe the testimony of the plaintiff and her witnesses."
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