On Friday, video footage of former President Donald Trump’s October 2022 deposition in the defamation lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll was made public, according to a CNBC report.
The release came after Inner City Press requested that Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is presiding over the trial, disclose the deposition and other evidence to the public.
In a letter addressed to Judge Kaplan, Matthew Lee of Inner City Press emphasized the public interest in the case, stating that it “involves a former president of the United States being sued for battery / sexual assault as well as defamation.”
He requested that the exhibits, sealed motions, and briefs be made available to the public.
The transcript of Trump’s deposition, taken at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, was filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The filing occurred after Carroll’s lawyers concluded their arguments in the trial, with Trump’s legal team opting not to present any witnesses.
Some excerpts of the transcript had previously been revealed in separate court documents, and portions of the deposition video were shown to jurors on Thursday, CNBC notes.
In one segment of the video, Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that Carroll was “not my type,” mistook her for his ex-wife Marla Maples in a photo from the 1980s that depicted Trump, Carroll, her then-husband, and his then-wife Ivana Trump.
Trump initially identified Carroll as Marla, saying, “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” before his lawyer Alina Habba corrected him, stating, “No, that’s Carroll.”
Trump then commented that the photo was “very blurry.”
Carroll, who is now 79, has accused Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s following a chance encounter at the Manhattan store.
In her lawsuit, she also claims that Trump, now 76 and seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, defamed her by accusing her of fabricating the rape allegation.
Trump has denied raping Carroll, asserting in the deposition, “It didn’t take place.”
He went on to describe her as “a sick person, in my opinion. Really sick. There is something wrong with her.”
American Faith reported that Reid Hoffman, the billionaire founder of LinkedIn and Democratic mega-donor, who is financially backing Carroll’s rape lawsuit against Trump, visited the private island of convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2014.
Hoffman, along with Joi Ito, a former MIT official, attended the Caribbean island, known as Little St. James, where Epstein and his associates allegedly trafficked minor girls.
Epstein was convicted in 2008 in Florida for soliciting a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute, but died in August 2019 while in a New York City jail, awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
Hoffman has admitted to visiting Epstein’s island once, in the context of an MIT fundraising trip with Ito, and has since expressed regret for the visit.
“It gnaws at me that, by lending my association, I helped his reputation, and thus delayed justice for his survivors,” Hoffman said. “While I relied on MIT’s endorsement, ultimately I made the mistake.”
