NEW YORK — A lawyer advised a jury Monday that Donald Trump must be held accountable for sexually attacking an recommendation columnist in 1996 as a result of even a former president is just not above the legislation.

Attorney Roberta Kaplan delivered the primary closing argument within the federal civil trial, displaying jurors video clips of Trump from his October deposition and replaying the “Access Hollywood” video from 2005 during which Trump stated right into a scorching mic that celebrities can seize ladies’s genitals with out asking.

Closing arguments have been anticipated to final all day within the case because the jurors in Manhattan hear closing remarks from attorneys in regards to the claims author E. Jean Carroll introduced towards Trump.

Kaplan recalled Trump’s remark that “stars like him can get away with sexually assaulting women.”

“That’s who Donald Trump is. That is how he thinks. And that’s what he does,” Kaplan stated. “He thinks he can get away with it here.”

She advised jurors that it wasn’t a “he said, she said” case however somewhat one during which jurors ought to weigh what 11 witnesses, together with Carroll, stated versus what they heard from Trump in his video deposition.

“He didn’t even bother to show up here in person,” Kaplan stated. She advised jurors that a lot of what he stated 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 stated. “He knows what he did. He knows that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll.”

Trump, who has not attended the trial, has insisted in public statements and within the deposition that Carroll made up the claims to spice up gross sales of a 2019 memoir.

Carroll, 79, who's looking for compensatory and punitive damages, testified for greater than two days in the course of the trial, which is coming into its third week.

She stated she was leaving a Bergdorf Goodman retailer by way of a revolving door in spring 1996 when Trump was coming into the shop and stopped her to assist him store for a present for a lady.

Carroll stated they ultimately took escalators to the shop’s desolate sixth ground, the place they teased one another about making an attempt on a chunk of see-through lingerie.

She stated she entered a dressing room with Trump earlier than the flirtatious outing turned violent, with Trump slamming her towards a wall, flattening her tights and raping her. She stated she kneed him after an encounter that lasted a number of minutes and fled the shop.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who's unrelated to Roberta Kaplan, advised jurors that they might start deliberations Tuesday after he spends about an hour studying them the legislation that may pertain to battery and defamation, the 2 allegations they have to determine.

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