Donald Trump denied raping writer E Jean Carroll in a deposition video played on Wednesday for a Manhattan federal jury, as the former US president sought to defend himself in a civil trial without testifying in person.
Mr Trump, front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said in the October 2022 deposition that the alleged rape in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City decades ago did not happen.
“It’s the most ridiculous, disgusting story,” Mr Trump said in the video, hunched over a conference table as Ms Carroll’s lawyers presented documents to him. “It’s just made up.”
Although the deposition footage was not released, portions of the transcript have been filed publicly.
Mr Trump will not be testifying in person, and his legal team told US District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Wednesday they would not be calling any witnesses.
The trial is in its sixth day and is expected to extend into next week.
Ms Carroll’s civil lawsuit for battery and defamation alleges Mr Trump raped her in the mid-1990s and then tarred her reputation by claiming in an October 2022 post on his Truth Social platform that the former Elle magazine advice columnist’s case was a “hoax and a lie".
Denying the allegations, Mr Trump accused Ms Carroll of making up the story to drive sales of a 2019 memoir in which she made her claims public.
He has not attended the trial.
"I hear we're doing very well in New York," Mr Trump said on Wednesday when asked why he was not in court. He spoke to reporters in Scotland where he was playing golf.
The trial has also featured testimony from two women who say Mr Trump sexually assaulted them decades ago.
Former People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff told jurors on Wednesday that Trump cornered her at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2005 and forcibly kissed her for a “few minutes” until a butler interrupted the alleged assault.
“It really had a profound effect on me,” Ms Stoynoff said through tears, describing the intense shame and self-doubt she said she felt after the encounter.
Another woman, Jessica Leeds, testified on Tuesday that Mr Trump kissed her, groped her and put his hand up her skirt on a flight in 1979.
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Aston martin DBX specs
Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: nine-speed automatic
Power: 542bhp
Torque: 700Nm
Top speed: 291kph
Price: Dh848,000
On sale: Q2, 2020
The Bio
Favourite vegetable: “I really like the taste of the beetroot, the potatoes and the eggplant we are producing.”
Holiday destination: “I like Paris very much, it’s a city very close to my heart.”
Book: “Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. I am not a communist, but there are a lot of lessons for the capitalist system, if you let it get out of control, and humanity.”
Musician: “I like very much Fairuz, the Lebanese singer, and the other is Umm Kulthum. Fairuz is for listening to in the morning, Umm Kulthum for the night.”
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Director: Scott Cooper
Starring: Jeremy Allen White, Odessa Young, Jeremy Strong
Rating: 4/5
In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
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Russia's Muslim Heartlands
Dominic Rubin, Oxford
Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
SANCTIONED
- Kirill Shamalov, Russia's youngest billionaire and previously married to Putin's daughter Katarina
- Petr Fradkov, head of recently sanctioned Promsvyazbank and son of former head of Russian Foreign Intelligence, the FSB.
- Denis Bortnikov, Deputy President of Russia's largest bank VTB. He is the son of Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB which was responsible for the poisoning of political activist Alexey Navalny in August 2020 with banned chemical agent novichok.
- Yury Slyusar, director of United Aircraft Corporation, a major aircraft manufacturer for the Russian military.
- Elena Aleksandrovna Georgieva, chair of the board of Novikombank, a state-owned defence conglomerate.
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
Key findings of Jenkins report
- Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, "accepted the political utility of violence"
- Views of key Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, have “consistently been understood” as permitting “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” and “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
- Muslim Brotherhood at all levels has repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians.
- Laying out the report in the House of Commons, David Cameron told MPs: "The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism."
Christopher Robin
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Haley Atwell, Jim Cummings, Peter Capaldi
Three stars
'My Son'
Director: Christian Carion
Starring: James McAvoy, Claire Foy, Tom Cullen, Gary Lewis
Rating: 2/5