Trump lashes out at the journalist who accuses him of raping her in a changing room: "She's a liar!"

E. Jean Carroll, this Thursday after leaving the court in Manhattan (New York). John Minchillo (AP)

Pending the final prosecution and defense arguments, scheduled for next Monday, the trial against Donald Trump for the alleged rape of the journalist and columnist E. Jean Carroll has practically been seen for sentencing.

The Republican has not appeared in the New York court that is trying him, but through a video message he has again attacked Carroll.

“She is a liar!” Trump exclaimed in the video, shown Thursday.

It is a civil trial, in which the 79-year-old plaintiff aspires to compensation for damages, so the Republican candidate for re-election in 2024 would not face a prison sentence if found guilty. .

His defense waived its right to call witnesses on Tuesday, so the process has been completed in just over two weeks.

Trump is more concerned about getting the transfer of the criminal case for which he has been charged to a federal court, something his lawyers are working on.

In early April, he was indicted for 34 counts of accounting fraud related to payments to cover up extramarital affairs before the 2016 presidential elections. The next hearing is scheduled for early December and the trial will not take place until early 2024 at the earliest. .

In connection with the alleged rape of Carroll in a fitting room of an upscale New York department store in the spring of 1996, two friends took the stand this week who claimed they spoke to the former Elle magazine columnist shortly after

alleged aggression and that his story seemed plausible to them.

Two other women have reported abuse by the tycoon.

One said Trump grabbed and groped her during a flight in the late 1970s, while the other explained that the Republican had forcibly kissed her at her Florida home in 2005.

The jury was also able to view on Thursday a fragment of the well-known 2005 video in which Trump boasts of denigrating women at will.

“When you're a star, they let you do it.

You can do anything to them, grab them by the pussy”, is the most degrading and well-known phrase on the recording.

In his statement on video, Trump called the video, "which is already old," "locker room talk."

According to a balance of the US press, Trump has so far been accused by more than 20 women of sexually assaulting them or inappropriate gestures, although this is the first time that he has come to trial for this reason.

The tycoon has always denied the accusations and has never been criminally prosecuted until the indictment of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, for buying the silence of three witnesses with money,

among them the porn actress Stormy Daniels.

Bragg has called again this week for Trump to be barred from publicly commenting on details of the case.

Open end

At the end of Thursday's hearing, chief judge Lewis Kaplan made Trump's lawyer confirm that he pleads "not guilty" (the equivalent of not guilty in the US system), as well as his resignation to testify before the nine citizens who make up the judge.

Then, "in the interest of justice," the judge left the door open for a last-minute appearance by the tycoon, "if he changes his mind."

From one of his properties, a golf club in Ireland, Trump told reporters on Thursday that he planned to "go back and face" Carroll, but his lead lawyer, Joe Tacopina, has given no indication to this effect.

However, its unpredictable nature and the judge's invitation leave the door open to any possibility, while it faces other processes of a much more serious political nature, such as the attempted potluck in Georgia in 2020 or its role in the assault on the Capitol in 2021. Given that the accusations of abuse of women are not new, and given his ability to come back -he won the 2016 elections a month after the publication of the video in which he boasts of denigrating women-, the resolution of the Carroll

it will serve as a measure of his ability to survive scandals that would ostracize any other politician.

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