Former President Donald Trump took time out from his campaign on Friday to defend himself against what he said were ‘made-up’ sexual assault allegations, and once again flirted with further lawsuits by accusing the writer E. Jean Carroll of inventing her claims against him.
It is a high-risk strategy that runs the danger of keeping the story in the headlines and reminding voters of his legal woes at a time when he is locked in a tight battle with Kamala Harris.
But he was bullish as he left the event at Trump Tower and spoke to DailyMail.com about whether this was the right way to win over female voters.
‘We’re doing great with women,’ he said.
His appearance was billed as a press conference. But in the event he answered just that one question.
Former President Donald Trump spoke to DailyMail.com as he left his Trump Tower event
The former president had spent the morning in court, where his lawyers argued that a $5 million verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing Carroll in 1996 should be overturned.
They said key evidence should have been excluded and other bits of evidence were improperly barred
Trump blamed his own attorneys for his predicament, saying’ I’m disappointed in my legal talent,’ even as he was flanked by seven of his lawyers in the lobby of Trump Tower.
He insisted the allegation that he had assaulted Carroll in a changing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store across the road, was a ‘fabricated’ story.
‘Never happened,’ he said, standing a matter of yards from a merchandise store selling his books and a Trump football.
‘Total phony story, and I feel sad that I have to come up here and explain that I have all this legal talent, but legal talent cannot overcome rigged judges.’
He went on to claim that ‘Law and Order’ was one of Carroll’s favorite T.V. shows.
‘And there’s an almost exact story as her story in ‘Law & Order’ about being attacked in the dressing room of a department store,’ he said, urging the assembled journalists to find the episode.
Trump’s denials bring further legal jeopardy. Judges have twice awarded millions of dollars of damages against him for claiming Carroll’s story was not true.
Trump stood with his legal team in the lobby of Trump Tower on Friday before heading to North Carolina for a campaign event
He spoke at length using note cards but did not take questions from the assembled journalists other than from DailyMail.com
Trump sat feet away from E. Jean Carroll in New York court on Friday morning
And even as he tried to defend his innocence, Democratic operatives will be poring over the footage to turn it into attack ads.
In the latest ABC/Ipsos poll, Trump lags Harris among women by 54 percent to 41 percent.
And Trump ensured that news bulletins will have clips of him talking about two other women who told their own stories in support of Carroll.
He said he could not have molested a woman on a plane in the late 1970s because immobile armrests would have made it impossible.
Last year, Jessica Leeds had testified that he put his hand up her skirt and grabbed her chest as they sat side by side in first class.
‘Think of the impracticality of this. I’m famous, I’m in a plane. People are coming into the plane, and I’m looking at a woman, and I grab her and I start kissing her and making out with her,’ he said.
‘What are the chances of that happening?’
‘And frankly, I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say, but it couldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen. And she would not have been the chosen one.’
Trump took time out from his campaign schedule to address the media on Friday
Trump’s lawyers argued that a $5 million verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing Carroll (pictured here outside court on Friday) in 1996 should be overturned.
He also pointed out there was no police report, witnesses or other corroboration.
Trump left it to his lawyer Alina Habba to join the dots and appeal to women voters to stand up for justice.
‘As a woman who has stood with President Trump, who has spent extensive time with President Trump and with his beautiful family, I will tell you that is not President Trump, and I completely am disgusted by what I have seen happen to this person, his family, and the Trump organization that we stand in right now,’ she said.
‘You must vote Donald Trump back in because as an attorney, as a woman, as a mother, our future of this country depends on it.’
Will Scharf, a member of the legal team, set out the grounds of the appeal, saying lawyers had been unable to cross-examine Carroll properly, or explain the political forces behind the case.
‘This is a lawsuit that was instigated in large part by George Conway, a longtime political foe and adversary of President Trump,’ he said.
‘This is a lawsuit that was funded by Reid Hoffman, a key political ally of the Biden Harris administration, and a major Democrat donor.
‘We were limited in the evidence we were allowed to present at trial about these crucial facts.’
