By JAKE OFFENHARTZ and LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK — With former President Donald Trump no longer in the courtroom Thursday, a columnist who accused him of sexually attacking her concluded her testimony with an emphatic denial that she had benefited from the publicity that followed the allegations.
A Trump attorney tried to show the jury that E. Jean Carroll has achieved the fame, if not the fortune, she desired after the publication of a memoir accusing Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
Carroll responded: “No, my status was lowered. I’m partaking in this trial to bring my own reputation and status back.”
The testimony came on the third day of a trial in Manhattan federal court that will determine what damages, if any, Trump owes for remarks he made about Carroll when he was president. A jury has already found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in 1996 and defaming her in a separate round of denials he made following his presidency.
In her final day on the witness stand, Carroll said her allegations against Trump – first made public in a 2019 article in New York Magazine – had brought her an unexpected degree of infamy, along with death threats.
An attorney for Trump, Alina Habba, countered that Carroll’s social media followers increased “exponentially” since the allegations, adding that she had gained professional opportunities and social standing among left-leaning celebrities.
“I’ve been invited to two parties,” Carroll responded dryly, before adding: “Yes, I’m more well known and I’m hated by a lot more people.”
Trump, who had attended the first two days of the trial, was in Florida Thursday for the funeral of his mother-in-law.
During the previous day’s proceeding, he was scolded by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan and threatened with expulsion after a lawyer for Carroll complained he was grumbling about the case loudly enough that jurors could hear him.
Though he was absent from the…
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