E Jean Carroll, the writer seeking millions of dollars from Donald Trump for defamation, has forcefully rejected suggestions that her reputation has been enhanced in the years since she publicly accused the former US president of rape.
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Under questioning from Trump's lawyer Alina Habba at a civil damages trial in federal court in Manhattan, Carroll, 80, acknowledged receiving more attention from media and celebrities since publicising her rape claim in June 2019 but said she has also been widely disparaged.
"My status is lowered," Carroll told Habba.
"I am partaking in this trial to bring my old reputation and status back."
Carroll is seeking at least $US10 million ($A15 million) from Trump for two statements he made as president in which he denied assaulting her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room and said she concocted the claim to promote her memoir.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan has already ruled that Trump sexually abused Carroll by forcing his fingers into her vagina and that he defamed her in June 2019.
The nine-person jury need decide only how much Trump should pay Carroll in damages.
Trump, a Republican, has used the trial and his other legal travails to rally supporters and raise funds for his 2024 White House run, calling the cases part of a political plot.
He has separately pleaded not guilty in four state and federal criminal cases, including two claiming that he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Carroll's rape claim was first publicised in a book excerpt in New York magazine.
In Thursday's proceedings, Habba told jurors that Carroll was being attacked on Twitter for five hours before the White House denied her claim, including that Carroll was a "disgrace" and promoting "fake news" to ruin Trump's 2020 re-election bid.
Habba was trying to show that Trump's denial did not shatter Carroll's reputation, as Carroll had testified on Wednesday, and that the writer has leveraged her claim into new-found fame as an advocate for women.
Carroll agreed that the $US5 million verdict has drawn praise from celebrities like Jamie Lee Curtis, John Cusack, Bette Midler, Alyssa Milano, Rob Reiner and Mira Sorvino but that she has also drawn a "wave of slime" from detractors.
"I am more well known, and I am hated by a lot more people," Carroll said.
Trump attended court on Wednesday but was not there on Thursday, having planned to attend his mother-in-law's funeral in Florida.
In overnight posts on his Truth Social website, Trump referred to Carroll's earlier testimony that she threw out some emails from people who criticised her coming forward, and that she owned an unlicensed gun she inherited from her father.
"Now that E Jean Carroll has admitted to illegally deleting and destroying mountains of evidence (as well as, it seems, unlawfully owning a gun and buying ammunition!), if Judge Lewis Kaplan does the right and PATRIOTIC thing, he will immediately dismiss the current Election Interfering Witch Hunt Trial," Trump wrote.
Trump could testify next week.
Australian Associated Press
