After claiming that she “was not my type,” Donald Trump shockingly mistook his sexual assault accuser E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples in testimony for her lawsuit against the former president. Ms. Carroll, who is now 79 years old, has filed a lawsuit against Trump for sexual assault and defamation after he said in a 2019 interview with “The Hill” that she was “totally lying” and simply trying to market her book.

One of Trump’s key defenses against Carroll’s claim that he raped her in a New York department store changing room in the middle of the 1990s was possibly undermined in excerpts from a deposition that were made public on Tuesday.

After Trump stated in a 2019 interview with “The Hill” that Carroll was “totally lying” and simply attempting to market her book, Carroll, now 79, has filed a lawsuit against him for both sexual assault and defamation.
Trump reiterated his frequently repeated assertion that he is not attracted to women who look like Carroll in the Bergdorf Goodman store’s changing rooms, which is why he could not have pursued or raped her there.

“I will say it with the utmost respect. First of all, she is not my type. Second, it never took place,” he stated.

He reiterated the statement when directly asked about the alleged incident in the deposition.

“Physically she’s not my type,” I say, “and now that I’ve gotten indirect to hear things about her, she wouldn’t be my type in any way, shape, or form.” She is not my type.

However, Trump said, “That’s Marla, that’s my wife” when shown a picture of himself with Carroll and others at a reception in the 1990s before his own attorney corrected him.

From 1993 to 1999, Trump, 76, was married to Maples, his second wife. In 1998, he started dating Melania Trump, who is now his wife.

Carroll, who worked as a columnist for “Elle” magazine in the 1990s before going on to write for other well-known publications, did not make her claims public at the time of the incident.

However, she made it public in a new book in 2019, prompting Trump’s denial.

Carroll then expanded her case by suing Trump for the assault in November, following the passage of a new New York law designed to protect victims of sexual assault decades after the attacks began.

The lawsuits seek financial compensation for psychological harm, suffering, loss of dignity, and damage to her reputation.

In the defamation case, the court took depositions from both parties in October, and the judge said that the trial would start on April 10.

Because he made the initial remarks about Carroll while he was president, Trump may be protected in the defamation case.

However, he has continued to comment, most recently in an October social media post in which he described her book as “a complete scam” and her story as “a hoax and a lie.”