Former President Donald Trump took a break from the campaign trail on Friday to defend himself against what he said were “fabricated” sexual assault allegations, once again flirting with more lawsuits by accusing writer E. Jean Carroll of fabricating her allegations against him.
It’s a high-stakes strategy that risks keeping the story in the headlines and reminding voters of his legal troubles at a time when he is locked in a tight battle with Kamala Harris.
But she was upbeat as she left the Trump Tower event and spoke to DailyMail.com about whether this was the right way to win over female voters.
“We are doing very well with women,” he said.
His appearance was billed as a press conference, but he ultimately answered only that question.
Former President Donald Trump spoke to DailyMail.com as he left his event at Trump Tower
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 pieces of evidence were improperly blocked.
Trump blamed his own lawyers for his predicament, saying, “I’m disappointed in my legal talent,” even as he stood flanked by seven of his lawyers in the lobby of Trump Tower.
He insisted the allegation that he assaulted Carroll in a changing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store across the street was a “fabricated” story.
“It never happened,” he said, standing a few feet from a store selling his books and a Trump soccer ball.
“It’s a totally false story. It saddens me to have to come here and explain that I have all this legal talent, but legal talent cannot defeat rigged judges.”
He went on to state that ‘Law & Order’ was one of Carroll’s favorite television shows.
“And there’s a story almost exactly like the one in ‘Law & Order’ about being attacked in a fitting room at a department store,” she said, urging the assembled reporters to find the episode.
Trump’s denials carry further legal risks. Judges have twice awarded him millions of dollars in damages for claiming Carroll’s story was untrue.
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 index cards but did not take questions from reporters gathered there, except for those from DailyMail.com.
Trump sat a few feet away from E. Jean Carroll in the New York courtroom on Friday morning.
And as he tries to defend his innocence, Democratic operatives will analyze the images to turn them into attack ads.
In the latest ABC/Ipsos poll, Trump trails Harris among women by 54 percent to 41 percent.
And Trump said the news bulletins would feature clips of him talking about two other women who told their own stories in support of Carroll.
He said he could not have abused a woman on an airplane in the late 1970s because the immovable armrests would have made it impossible.
Last year, Jessica Leeds testified that he reached under her skirt and grabbed her breast while they were sitting next to each other in first class.
“Think how impractical this would be. I’m famous, I’m on a plane. People are getting on the plane, and I look at a woman, 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, but it couldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen. And she wouldn’t have been the one.”
Trump took time out of his campaign schedule to address the media on Friday
Trump’s lawyers argued that a $5 million verdict finding him liable for sexually assaulting Carroll (pictured outside the courthouse on Friday) in 1996 should be overturned.
He also noted that there is no police report, witnesses or other corroboration.
Trump left it to his lawyer Alina Habba to connect the dots and call on female voters to stand up for justice.
“As a woman who has supported President Trump, who has spent a lot of time with President Trump and his beautiful family, I will tell you that is not President Trump and I am completely disgusted by what I have seen happen to this person, his family and the Trump organization that we now find ourselves in,” she said.
“You must vote for Donald Trump again because, as a lawyer, as a woman, as a mother, the future of this country depends on it.”
Will Scharf, a member of the legal team, outlined the reasons for the appeal, saying the lawyers had failed to adequately question Carroll or explain the political forces behind the case.
“This is a lawsuit that was initiated in large part by George Conway, a longtime political enemy 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 Democratic donor.
“We were limited in the evidence we were allowed to present at trial on these crucial facts.”