Donald Trump should be held responsible for sexually assaulting an advice columnist in 1996 because even a former president is not above the law, a lawyer for the writer told a jury Monday closing arguments in the trial accusing Trump of rape .

A Trump attorney responded by calling the prosecution’s account

unbelievable and saying no one is under the law, either “incredible” and “outrageous”. With final arguments concluded, the judge sent the jury home with instructions to return Tuesday to hear instructions for about an hour before they begin deliberations. Jurors will be asked to decide whether Trump committed battery and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll and whether punitive damages should be awarded. To summarize Carroll’s case:

Attorney Roberta Kaplan

representing writer E. Jean Carroll in her claims against Trump,

jurors showed video clips of Trump from his October statement and replayed the 2005 Access Hollywood video in which Trump said into a hot microphone that celebrities can grab women’s genitals without asking.

Kaplan recalled Trump’s comment that stars like him get away with sexually assaulting women.

That’s who Donald Trump is. That’s how he thinks. And that’s what he does, Kaplan said. He thinks he can make it here.

Kaplan used Trump’s words to support Carroll’s claims that Trump raped her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman, an upscale department store across from Trump Tower, in the early spring of 1996.

Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina attacked the allegations as absurd, saying they were an affront to justice and minimized real rape victims.

He agreed with Kaplan that no one is above the law, but he warned that no one is below it.

Tacopina told jurors that they don’t have to profit her millions of dollars

because they will have no doubts about how this story, this scam of a lawsuit, came about. because they will see that it is impossible to believe the ‘unbelievable’. This is an absolutely outrageous case, he said, claiming that Carroll had sued to raise her status and for political reasons. Tacopina repeatedly labeled Carroll’s allegations implausible, saying she made them to raise her status and for political reasons.

And he noted that even Carroll had testified that it was an astonishing coincidence that a branch of Law and Order aired an episode in 2012 where a woman is raped in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman.

What is the chance of that? Tacopina asked. One in 20 billion? One in 10 billion?

Tacopina said the allegations were too absurd to call his client as a witness, noting that Carroll expected jurors to believe Trump would risk everything to assault a woman in a crowded department store, though she wasn’t exactly sure. could remember when the attack happened. What could I have asked Donald Trump? Where were you on an unknown date, 27 or 28 years ago? he said. In a rebuttal argument, Carroll attorney Mike Ferrara mocked Trump’s decision to skip the trial, saying jurors could use his absence to conclude Trump committed the assault because Trump never looked you in the eye and denied it .

Kaplan told jurors it was not a he said, she said case, but rather one in which jurors had to weigh what 11 witnesses, including Carroll, said to what they heard from Trump in his video statement.

He didn’t even bother to appear here in person, Kaplan said, referring to Trump’s absence from the proceedings in federal court in Manhattan. She told the jurors that much of what he said in his deposition and in public statements actually supports our side of the case.

In a very real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself, she said. He knows what he did. He knows he sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll.

Kaplan recounted the testimony of two women who say they were sexually assaulted by Trump.

Jessica Leeds, 81, said he grabbed her breast during a flight in 1979 and ran his hand up her skirt. Natasha Stoynoff said Trump forcefully kissed her at his Florida mansion in 2005 when she was working on a story about his marriage for People magazine.

Trump has insisted in public statements and in the statement that Carroll fabricated the claims to boost sales of a 2019 memoir. He has called Carroll mentally ill” and a disgrace.

Carroll, 79, who is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, was tested for more than two days. Kaplan praised her testimony as credible.

It was consistent and forceful, the attorney said.

She contrasted that testimony with Trump’s statement, noting that a man who had mocked Carroll as not his type was shown a photo of Carroll from more than three decades ago and twice misidentified her as his second wife, Marla Maples .

Carroll, a former cheerleader and Miss Indiana, was just Mr. Trump’s type, Kaplan said. She’s smart. She’s funny. She is beautiful. And above all, she is courageous.

Carroll said she was leaving the Bergdorf Goodman store through a revolving door in the spring of 1996 when Trump entered the store and stopped her from helping him shop for a gift for a woman.

Carroll, a former Saturday Night Live writer, said they took escalators to the store

left almost empty

sixth floor, where they teased each other about trying on see-through lingerie.

She said she went into a locker room with Trump before the flirting turned violent, with Trump slamming her against a wall, pulling down her tights and raping her. She said she kneed him after an encounter that lasted several minutes and fled the store.

Carroll partly blames the encounter

here

never had an intimate relationship again in her life.

Trump’s public comments form the basis of Carroll’s defamation claim. Kaplan called the comments lies, saying they ruined her client’s reputation and ended her 27-year tenure as an Elle magazine columnist.

Kaplan urged the jurors to vote in favor of my brave client, E. Jean Carroll, but she did not quote a figure for the damages sought.

Consider the evidence and pick a number you think is correct, she said. This lawsuit is not about the money. This lawsuit is about getting her name back.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who is not related to Roberta Kaplan, told jurors they would begin deliberations on Tuesday after he spent about an hour reading the law pertaining to battery and defamation, the two charges she have to decide. If they find in Carroll’s favor, they could also award punitive damages.