NEW YORK — The notorious 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic speaking disparagingly about women over a decade before he became president can be shown to jurors deciding what he owes a columnist he sexually abused and then defamed, a judge ruled Tuesday, setting ground rules for a trial next week.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in a written order narrowed what lawyers can introduce at the trial beginning Jan. 16, but he allowed the video to be shown. The video was seen by a jury that in May concluded that Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store in 1996 and defamed her in 2022. It awarded $5 million in damages.
In the tape, Trump was heard bragging about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women who were not his wife as he waited to make a cameo appearance on a soap opera in 2005. In a statement after the tape emerged shortly before the November 2016 presidential election, Trump dismissed it as “locker room banter” and “a private conversation.”
Kaplan wrote that a jury could find the “Access Hollywood” video to be useful insight into Trump’s state of mind regarding how he viewed Carroll specifically, given the similarity between the behavior he described on the video and Carroll’s sexual assault claim.
“The jury could find that Mr. Trump was prepared to admit privately to sexual assaults eerily similar to that alleged by Ms. Carroll,” the judge said.
Lawyers for Trump did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
The jury in May did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that Trump raped Carroll, who had testified that the pair had a chance encounter that was flirtatious and humorous until Trump pushed her against a wall and sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman store dressing room across from Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan.
Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media at a Washington hotel, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, after attending a hearing before…
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