2/2
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump rape accuser E. Jean Carroll arrives for her hearing at federal court during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., October 21, 2020. REUTERS/Carlo All
2/2
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday rejected Donald Trump’s effort to exclude an “Access Hollywood” tape of him making vulgar comments about women from a defamation lawsuit by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who says the former president raped her in the mid-1990s.
Carroll sought to introduce the tape, which was recorded in 2005 and where Trump boasted about forcing himself on women, as evidence that Trump had a propensity for sexual assaults comparable to what he allegedly did to her.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said that while propensity evidence is ordinarily not admissible, a reasonable jury could find that Trump admitted in the tape “that he in fact has had contact with women’s genitalia in the past without their consent, or that he has attempted to do so.”
Trump has denied raping Carroll. His lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Carroll’s lawyers did not immediately respond to similar requests.
Kaplan also rejected Trump’s bid to exclude testimony from two women who have claimed that he sexually assaulted them, as well as evidence of emotional harm that Carroll claimed to suffer from her encounter with him.
