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Donald Trump, E. Gene Carroll, John Johnson and Ivana Trump at an NBC party, late 1980s.
US District Court in Manhattan
Former President Donald Trump recently mistook his rape accuser E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples when he was questioned about an old photo of him and Carroll by her defamation lawyer, a recently made public court filing shows.
Trump’s belief that writer Carol is actually his second wife Maples sharply undermines the New York real estate mogul’s repeated claims that he wouldn’t even have sex with Carol because she’s “not my type.”
Carroll, 79, first alleged in a 2019 magazine article that Trump, who was president at the time, raped her in a dressing room at Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1995 or 1996 after a chance encounter in the store .
Trump, 76, denied her claims, accusing Carroll of lying. He also said Carroll was motivated by a desire to generate book sales and political animus in making the allegations.
“She’s not my type,” Trump told The Hill news site in 2019.
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Carroll is suing Trump, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in two lawsuits in Manhattan federal court for defaming her by characterizing her claims and alleged motivations. One case was filed in 2019 after Trump first denied her allegations, and the second was filed this fall after he repeated his allegations about her motivations.
In the latter case, she also sued him for battery, for the alleged rape itself, under a new New York state law that opens a one-year window for adults to file sexual assault claims that would otherwise be too old to pursue because of the statute of limitations.
During testimony on Oct. 19 at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, which was made public on Wednesday, Trump was shown a photo from an NBC event circa 1987.
The image shows him from behind, facing Carroll and her then-husband, television journalist John Johnson, with Trump’s then-wife, the late Ivana Trump, standing to his right.
“That’s Marla,” Trump said of the photo.
Carol’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said, “You’re saying Marla is in that picture?”
Trump replied, “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife.”
Real estate mogul, reality TV star and former potential presidential candidate Donald Trump was first married to former Czech athlete Ivana Trump. After 15 years of marriage, the couple had a very public and very messy divorce in 1992, which cost him . This may have discouraged the weaker man from dating again, but “The Donald” is no shrinking violet. A year later, he had a new bride on his arm in actress and socialite Marla Maples, 17 years younger than him. In 1997, the coup
Ron Galella | WireImage | Getty Images
His lawyer, Alina Haba, then interjected: “No, it’s Carol.”
Trump said, “Oh, I see.”
Kaplan then said, “The person you just named was E. Gene Carroll.”
When Haba repeated to Trump, “That’s Carroll,” he replied, “That’s Carroll?”
Elsewhere in the testimony, Trump said of Carroll: “She’s not my type.”
“She’s not a woman I would ever attract,” he later added.
The deposition was attached to a lawsuit last week by Carroll’s lawyers, but became public Wednesday after Trump’s lawyers dropped their objection to its release.
Last week, Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered other parts of the testimony to be unsealed, ruling that Trump had no legal reason to keep them out of the public record in the case.
Trump married Maples in 1993, a few months after the birth of their daughter Tiffany. The couple, who began their romantic relationship while Trump was still married to Ivana, divorced six years later.
Trump married his current wife Melania Trump in 2005.
Kaplan scheduled Carroll’s trial to begin in April.
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