Not if he can help it
It is damning, no doubt about it. He is such a pig…
In April, Donald Trump’s lawyers are set to defend him in civil court against allegations from writer E. Jean Carroll that he raped her in a department store in the mid-’90s. When they do, they really, really want to ensure that jurors are not allowed to hear the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump brags about grabbing women “by the pussy” without their consent. Why? Because they know how bad it makes him sound!
In court papers filed late Thursday, Trump attorneys Alina Habba and Michael Madaio argued that the 2005 tape, which emerged while Trump was running for president the first time, should be banned from the trial. (They want both the tape itself and any references to it blocked.) Calling the recording “irrelevant and highly prejudicial,” the attorneys claim, per the Associated Press, that it “might unjustly be used to suggest to jurors that Trump had a propensity for sexual assault and therefore must have raped Carroll.” Why might the tape give jurors that idea, you ask? As a reminder, Trump told Access Hollywood host Billy Bush: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women]. I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Not surprisingly, Trump’s attorneys also reportedly want to block testimony from two women who have alleged sexual misconduct by the ex-president. (Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 26 women and has denied any and all allegations against him.)
During a deposition in October, Trump—who claimed in a 2019 interview with The Hill that Carroll was “totally lying” and not his “type”—mistook Carroll for his second ex-wife, Marla Maples. At other points in the under-oath deposition, Trump called Carroll a “nut job” and continued to insist that her allegations are a “hoax.”
In perhaps related news, Ivana Trump reportedly said during her 1990 divorce deposition that Trump had raped her the prior year, after ripping out handfuls of her hair. She later claimed she had not accused him in a “literal or criminal sense.”
They should ask him about this:
Shortly after his victory last year, Donald J. Trump began revisiting one of his deepest public humiliations: the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape of him making vulgar comments about women.
Despite his public acknowledgment of the recording’s authenticity in the final days of the presidential campaign — and his hasty videotaped apology under pressure from his advisers — Mr. Trump as president-elect began raising the prospect with allies that it may not have been him on the tape after all.
Most of Mr. Trump’s aides ignored his changing story. But in January, shortly before his inauguration, Mr. Trump told a Republican senator that he wanted to investigate the recording that had him boasting about grabbing women’s genitals.
“We don’t think that was my voice,” Mr. Trump told the senator, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Since then, Mr. Trump has continued to suggest that the tape that nearly upended his campaign was not actually him, according to three people close to the president.
I guess we’ll find out if it’s going to be excluded. But who in the world hasn’t heard it already?