Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll rested her civil case against Donald Trump on Thursday, shortly after jurors were shown a deposition video of the former president confusing the accuser with his ex-wife Marla Maples.
“It’s Marla,” Trump said during a deposition for the case when shown a picture of him, Carroll and Carroll’s ex-husband in the 1980s.
“That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” Trump continued before being corrected by his lawyer, Alina Habba. “No, that’s Carroll,” Habba said. Trump then responded the photo was “very blurry.”
The end of Carroll’s case potentially paves the way for the trial to move to closing arguments on Monday. Trump’s lawyers said Wednesday that he will not testify and that they are not putting on any witnesses.
Trump, however, told reporters on a golf course in Ireland on Thursday that he was “going back to New York” because of the case.
Asked if he was going to the trial, he said, “I’ll probably attend,” according to a Sky News video of his remarks. “She’s a fake,” he said of Carroll. “It’s a disgrace.”
Asked if he had any comment on his client’s remarks, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said, “No.”
Carroll has sued Trump for battery and defamation, charging he raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s and then falsely accused her of concocting a “hoax” after she went public with her claim in 2019.
In the excerpts played for the jury in Manhattan federal court, Trump maintained that despite the Maples mixup, Carroll was “not my type.” Later, he was asked if the three women he’d married were his type. “Yeah,” he answered.
Trump also acknowledged that when Carroll went public with her claims in a book she’d written, the then-president accused her of trying to boost her sales with a made-up story for financial and political reasons — even though at that point he didn’t know her political affiliation, her financial situation or her publisher.
Asked what the basis for his allegations were, Trump answered, “I…
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