Donald Trump has assured the public many times that he could not have raped E. Jean Carroll as she has alleged, because she’s “not [his] type.”
Oddly, he seemed to think otherwise when, during his deposition, he was shown a photo of himself and Carroll together.
Trump is headed to court over the rape allegation, and Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, sat with him in October for a sworn deposition ahead of the trial.
Portions of his deposition were unsealed last week, and it was a train wreck, including, among other things, the former president claiming that Carroll said she “loved” being raped.
He also reiterated his longstanding attempt at an alibi, telling Kaplan that the allegation is a “hoax” and that, while he believes it’s “not politically correct to say it,” the victim is “not [his] type.”
However, he seemed to give the lie to that statement when he was shown a photo of himself with Carroll, as newly-released portions of the deposition transcript show.
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He reportedly looked at the photo and declared that it was his ex-wife, Marla Maples.
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His attorney, Alina Habba, had to correct him and explain to him that the woman in the photo was not the person to whom he was married for more than half a decade and who bore his daughter, but the person to whom he insists he could never be attracted.
Trump’s blunder in a sworn deposition was quickly corrected by his attorney Alina Habba, who told him it was Carroll, not Maples, an actress and singer who was married to Trump from 1993 to 1999, the Washington Post wrote.
Trump’s attorneys had been fighting to keep the deposition sealed, according to Newsweek, but have now withdrawn their request to keep the information hidden, so the entire deposition could be public information at some point.
Carroll has two separate cases against Trump at the moment. This deposition is for her defamation case, in which she addresses that after she came forward publicly with her story, the then-president “lashed out with a series of false statements” and, after leaving office, “made additional false claims about Carroll in 2022…damaging her reputation even further.”
This case goes to trial in April.
The second is for the alleged rape itself, in a case Carroll filed after New York passed the Adult Survivors Act, which offers a temporary window for survivors of sexual assault which might otherwise have been outside the statute of limitations to pursue redress.