Trump misses deadline to testify at civil rape trial, closing arguments begin

WARNING: This article contains details and allegations of sexual assault and may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.

Closing arguments began Monday after former U.S. president Donald Trump rejected his last chance to testify at a civil trial in which a longtime advice columnist accuses him of raping her in a luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.

Trump, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, was given until 5 p.m. ET Sunday by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to file a request to testify. No such filing occurred.

Attorney Roberta Kaplan delivered the first closing argument in the federal civil trial on behalf of her client E. Jean Carroll, showing jurors video clips of Trump from his October deposition and replaying the Access Hollywood video from 2005 in which Trump said into a live microphone that celebrities can grab women's genitals without asking.

Kaplan recalled Trump's comment that "stars like him can get away with sexually assaulting women."

"That's who Donald Trump is. That is how he thinks. And that's what he does," Kaplan said. "He thinks he can get away with it here."

She told jurors that it wasn't a "he said, she said" case but rather one in which jurors should weigh what 11 witnesses, including Carroll, said versus what they heard from Trump in his video deposition.

She told jurors that much of what he said in his deposition and in public statements "actually supports our side of the case."

"In a very real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself," she said. "He knows what he did. He knows that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll."

Violent encounter, Carroll alleges

Carroll, 79, who is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, testified for more than two days during the trial, which is entering its third week.

On the witness stand, she testified that Trump, 76, raped her in spring 1996 she has been unsure of the precise date after they met at the entrance of the midtown Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman.

She said the encounter began as a fun and flirtatious outing as Trump coaxed her into helping him shop for a gift for another woman. She said they ended up in the store's desolate lingerie section, where they teased each other to try on a see-through bodysuit.

As Carroll recalled it, laughter accompanied them into a dressing room where Trump became violent, slamming her up against a wall, pulling aside her tights and raping her before she kneed him and fled the store.

The jury has also watched lengthy excerpts from an October videotaped deposition in which Trump vehemently denied raping Carroll or ever really knowing her.

In his deposition, Trump said Carroll made it up. He called it "a false, disgusting lie" delivered by a "nut job" who was trying to stoke sales of her book.

He also repeated comments he made in statements that she was not his "type."

"She's not my type and that's 100 per cent true," he said.

Repeats Access Hollywood claim

And he repeated his claims in a 2005 Access Hollywood video in which he bragged that men who are celebrities can grab women by the genitals without asking.

"Historically that's true with stars," he said.

"If you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true," he said. "Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately."

When the Access Hollywood recording came to light in October 2016, Trump downplayed it during a presidential debate as "locker-room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago."

Two women were also called to testify by Carroll's teamregarding their own allegations, including Canadian journalist Natasha Stoynoff, who testified that in 2005 Trump forcibly kissed her against her will while showing her around his Florida home while she was on assignment for People magazine.

After direct testimony, the judge adjusted a deadline for Trump to inform the court if he was going to testify, noting news reports in which Trump told reporters on Thursday at his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, that he would "probably attend" the trial.

"I'll be going back early because a woman made a claim that was totally false, it was fake," Trump said in Ireland. He left for his European trip after the start of the trial, the date of which has been known for several weeks.

"He didn't even bother to show up here in person," Kaplan said during Monday's closing argument, although Trump was not required to be in attendance.

Carroll sued Trump in November, minutes after New York state enacted a law allowing adult sexual assault victims to sue others even if the attacks occurred decades earlier.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

Jury deliberations are expected to take place this week.