Major Turn in Defamation Case: Trump Plans to Call Anderson Cooper as Witness
Former President Donald Trump will be calling Anderson Cooper as a witness in an upcoming civil trial over a writer’s allegations that Trump raped her in a department store changing room in the 1990s.
On Thursday, attorneys for Trump and E. Jean Carroll listed the witnesses they plan to call in the trial. Cooper was on Trump’s list, according to the Daily Beast.
The Daily Beast reported that Trump will be focusing on business deals made by Carroll after she first made her claim in 2019.
The Daily Beast said it was told by a source who knew the Trump legal strategy that Trump wants to focus on an interview in which Carroll told Cooper, “I think most people think of rape as being sexy. They think of the fantasies.”
Carroll initially sued Trump for defamation after he said she was lying about the claim as part of an effort to sell a book.
Carroll also has a suit against Trump for sexual battery using the New York Adult Survivors Act, which was passed last year to allow alleged victims of sexual abuse to file claims in cases that would otherwise be too old under the statute of limitations, according to the New York Post.
Trump’s attorney said he will provide a DNA sample in connection with the suit, but only under certain conditions, ABC News reported.
Attorney Joseph Tacopina said that Carroll’s side first has to produce missing pages from a DNA report on semen stains found on a dress Carroll says she wore the day of the alleged attack, which she has said took place in either 1995 or 1996.
Roberta Kaplan, who represents Carroll, called the demand a “legally frivolous delay tactic” and said it was designed to potentially influence jurors.
“The time has come for him to face a jury,” Kaplan wrote.
Tacopina said Carroll’s lawyers have failed to produce the missing pages of the DNA report because “she knows [Trump’s] DNA is not on the dress because the alleged sexual assault never occurred.”
Kaplan said there was no DNA evidence in the case.
Trump denied in an October deposition that the alleged attack ever took place.
“She said that I did something to her that never took place. There was no anything. I know nothing about this nut job,” he said.
“I think she’s sick, mentally sick,” Trump also said.
The trial is expected to begin in April.
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