E. Jean Carroll testified she can “still feel” the pain, choking up in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday as she recounted Donald Trump allegedly raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room nearly three decades ago.
Carroll’s voice broke as she told jurors she always wondered “why I walked in” to the department store changing room — where she alleged Trump “shoved” and pinned her against a wall, pulled her tights down and forced his fingers inside her before raping her.
“As I am sitting here today, I can still feel” the pain, Carroll, 79, testified.
“I always think back to why I walked in there,” Carroll said, as her voice broke, “to get myself in that situation.”
The former journalist took the stand on the second day of trial in her lawsuit accusing Trump, 76, of raping her in the spring of 1996 and then defaming her when he denied her claims decades later.
The former president was not in court for her testimony and also did not attend the start of the proceedings on Tuesday.
Carroll described how she ran into the real estate mogul at the Fifth Avenue store — which was across from Trump Tower.
The pair began “flirting” and bantering, she claimed.
Trump asked Carroll, then 52, to help him find a gift for a woman, which “delighted” Carroll — who as the advice columnist of Elle Magazine’s “Ask E. Jean” loved the prospect of giving the prominent New York City personality advice for a present.
Carroll said Trump took her up to the lingerie department, where he tossed a sheer grey lace body suit at her and told her to try it on — prompting her to joke back that he should try it on.
Carroll said she thought at the time that the encounter would make a “great story.”
“He said ‘Let’s try this on’ and motioned toward the dressing room,” Carroll recalled.
Once inside, Trump closed the door and “shoved” her against the wall bumping her head, she claimed.
Carroll pushed him back but he shoved her a second time, knocking her head again — and pinned her against the wall before pulling her tights down, Carroll testified.
Trump then allegedly raped Carroll before she was finally able to break free after she managed to lift her knee and shove him off, she recounted.
She then fled the store, she claimed.
She told the jury it was “very stupid” of her to walk into changing room, noting the door was open.
“And that open door has plagued me for years because I just walked into it,” she said.
Carroll said she felt shame and blame for the attack for walking into the room, and because she had been flirting with Trump leading up to the moment of the alleged attack.
“I know people have been through a lot worse than this,” Carroll testified.
“But it left me unable to ever have a romantic life again.”
Carroll told friends about the alleged rape — one right after and one the next day.
The first friend told her to go to the police, while the other warned Carroll that Trump would bury her legally.
Carroll wouldn’t go public with her accusations until 2019 when she wrote about the alleged assault in a book — an excerpt of which was published in New York Magazine.
In October 2019, Trump claimed Carroll’s claims were a “hoax,” claimed to not know her, and said she wasn’t his “type.”
Carroll sued Trump in November for the alleged rape and for allegedly defaming her by denying the claims.
Earlier in Carroll’s testimony, she told the jury: “I am here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen.
“He lied and shattered my reputation and I’m here to get my life back.”
During her testimony, the jury was shown a photo of Carroll and Trump in a photo with their respective spouses at the time, Ivana Trump and news anchor John Johnson.
Carroll said she had the photo from a party she attended when she first met Trump around 1987.
Trump has claimed he didn’t know Carroll and that nothing happened between them.
During opening remarks Tuesday Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, claimed Carroll “is abusing the system by advancing a false claim of rape for money, for political reasons and for status.”
Before trial Wednesday, Trump posted on his platform Truth Social that the case is “a made up SCAM” prompting Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan to chide Tacopina about his client’s “entirely inappropriate” post.
Tacopina told the judge he’d ask Trump to stop posting about the case.
