Trump holds press conference just to attack women who have accused him of sexual assault

WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump held a press conference Friday to address an appeal of a $5 million verdict in which he was found guilty of sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.

Instead, for almost 45 minutes, Trump stood in front of a microphone, ranted about Carroll and another woman who had accused him of sexual assault, and then walked away without answering questions.

“I never touched her,” Trump said of Carroll during the event in New York City. “I would have had no interest in meeting her. … She made up a story that was 100 percent fabricated, that I had attacked her.”

Without evidence, he accused Carroll He stole her story from an episode of a popular legal drama.

“Her favorite show is 'Law & Order'.“, Trump claimed. “There is a story almost identical to her story on 'Law & Order,' where she was attacked in the dressing room of a department store.”

“That's her favorite show, 'Law & Order,'” he repeated. “That's what she said.”

The Republican presidential candidate had just been in a federal courtroom with his lawyers, who argued that Carroll's civil suit against him should be dismissed in May 2023 because it was based on inadmissible evidence. The jury in that case found that Trump assaulted Carroll in the dressing room of a luxury department store in 1996 and awarded her $5 million.

In January 2024, a second jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million for defamation after Trump made derogatory remarks about her during his presidency. The judge in that case instructed the jury that they must first accept the previous jury's finding that Trump sexually harassed Carroll.

In his efforts to discredit Carroll, Trump launched into an attack during his speech on Friday on another woman who had accused him of sexually assaulting her on an airplane decades ago.

“She said … we became very intimate,” he said, recounting her allegations while lawyers stood behind him began to look uncomfortable“She said I was fooling around with her. And then, after 15 minutes… I grabbed her in a certain spot and she had enough.”

Trump scoffed that this could have happened on a commercial flight.

“I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening?” he said, adding: “I know you're going to say that's terrible, but it couldn't have happened, and… she wouldn't have been the chosen one.”

Before leaving the event and ignoring questions shouted at him by reporters, Trump blamed his legal team for failing him at his trial in 2023.

“To be honest, I'm disappointed in my legal ability,” he said as several of his lawyers stood beside him. “I wanted to appear at the first trial. My lawyer, who is no longer here and no longer with us, said, 'Sir, you should not appear.'”

HuffPost used to keep a running list of all the women who publicly accused Trump of sexual harassment or rape. When the number grew to over two dozen, we may have lost track.

Need help? Visit RAINN's National online hotline for sexual assault cases or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center website.