New York [US], May 5: Jurors in Donald Trump's civil rape trial on Thursday saw a video deposition in which the former U.S. president defended private comments he made in 2005 about grabbing women sexually without asking.
Trump was asked by a lawyer for his accuser, the writer E. Jean Carroll, about the 2005 "Access Hollywood" tape, where he said on a hot microphone that "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy."
"Historically, that's true, with stars. if you look over the last million years," Trump said in the video deposition taken last October and shown to the jury on Thursday, the seventh day of the rape trial in Manhattan federal court.
The "Access Hollywood" tape was first made public in October 2016, a month before Trump was elected U.S. president.
Carroll, 79, has testified that Trump, 76, raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-1990s, and then tarred her reputation and career by lying about it online.
A social media and marketing expert hired by Carroll told jurors on Thursday that the cost to repair the reputational damage of Trump's statements could range from $368,000 to $2.8 million. Carroll is seeking unspecified damages.
Trump's lawyers rested their case on Thursday without calling any witnesses, paving the way for closing arguments on Monday after a break on Friday.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said he would give Trump until 5 p.m. ET (2100 GMT) on Sunday to ask to reopen his case for the sole purpose of personally testifying.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation
