The first person E. Jean Carroll told after Donald Trump allegedly raped her inside a Midtown department store in the mid-1990s took the witness stand Tuesday.
After completing three days of riveting testimony, Carroll’s lawyers called the author and journalist Lisa Birnbach to corroborate her account about the alleged assault inside the Bergdorf Goodman lingerie department.
Birnbach told the court she was preparing dinner for her small kids when a “breathless, hyperventilating, emotional” Carroll called her around 6 p.m.
Carroll told Birnbach that she had bumped into Trump on a shopping trip and that he’d asked her to help pick out a gift for a woman. Birnbach said she realized the situation was serious when Carroll described what happened when they got to the lingerie department dressing rooms.
“He slammed her against the wall, and then as she was trying to move, he slammed his whole arm, pinned her against the wall with his arm and shoulders and with his free hand pulled down her tights,” Birnbach testified.
“E. Jean said to me many times, ‘He pulled down my tights,’ ‘He pulled down my tights.’”
“As soon as she said that, even though I knew my children didn’t know the word, I ducked out of the room,” Birnbach said. “I whispered, ‘E. Jean, he raped you. You should go to the police.’”
Birnbach said Carroll told her, “No, no, no. I don’t want to go to the police.”
“I said, ‘He raped you. I’ll take you to the police.”
But Carroll was adamant, Birnbach testified, swearing her to secrecy.
“She said, ‘Promise me you will never speak of this again. And promise me you’ll tell no one.’ And I promised her both those things.”
Carroll, 79, is suing Trump for sexual battery and defamation in the Manhattan federal court lawsuit. Trump has vehemently denied the assault, claiming Carroll and her friends made up the story to sell a book and destroy him politically.
Trump had repeatedly denied the assault because Carroll is not his “type.” Jurors are expected to hear from another of Carroll’s friends she told, Carol Martin, who urged her not to report it, and two women who have accused Trump of assaulting and molesting them in public.