Trump claims he’s ‘doing very well’ in E Jean Carroll civil rape trial

Donald Trump has claimed that his legal team is doing “very well” in the civil rape trial brought by former Elle advice columnist E Jean Carroll.

Ms Carroll claims that Mr Trump raped her in a fitting room at the Berghof Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. She sued him in 2019 and in 2022 after she published her allegation in an excerpt from her book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal in New York magazine.

Mr Trump told Sky News that he flew to Ireland instead of attending the civil trial because he had a “long-standing agreement” to visit his Doonberg golf course on the Irish west coast.

“We’ve had a long-standing agreement to come here. We’ve had a tremendous reception, a beautiful reception,” the ex-president said. “The people of Ireland have been great, and we’ve had tremendous success, and I hear we’re doing very well in New York.”

Mr Trump flew to Scotland on Monday to visit his two golf resorts there, before flying to Shannon Airport on Wednesday. He was set to play at Doonberg on Thursday before concluding his trip.

Mr Trump told the press that the issues surrounding trade after Brexit between Northern Ireland in the UK and Ireland in the EU was a “tough one”.

“Well we’re going to see, they’re negotiating and we’re going to see. There are a lot of negotiations going on in Ireland and other places right now, but it’s going be a tough one,” he said. “It’s not an easy one. We have to work it out.”

The current trial is a civil battery and defamation case after Mr Trump’s aggressive denials of Ms Carroll’s claim.

The recorded deposition of Mr Trump was played in the courtroom on Wednesday afternoon.

In the footage, the former president struggled to remember when he was married to his second wife, Marla Maples, according to Law & Crime.

Mr Trump said he went to the Berghof Goodman department store “very rarely”.

“I went there very seldom, almost, if ever,” he said.

Growing angry, Mr Trump rejected the notion that he raped Ms Carroll on “a major floor of a major store.”

“It’s the most ridiculous, disgusting story. It’s just made up,” he said.

Mr Trump remains popular in Doonberg, a small seaside village where the former president’s resort hires about as many workers during peak season as there are residents in the village – 300, according to Sky News.

Area residents focus on the resort’s economic impact on the area instead of Mr Trump’s politics, leading to the former president rarely being asked critical questions during his visits – he has been there six times since he bought the property in 2014.

Sky News Ireland Correspondent Stephen Murphy reported that after he asked Mr Trump why he was playing golf instead of being at the E Jean Carroll trial, a group of bar patrons called him a “f****** scumbag” and they demanded to know why the reporter “attacked” Mr Trump.

Mr Murphy wrote that most locals and hotel staff tolerate the attention from the media but that some in the area are “clearly resentful of outsiders questioning their loyalty to the Trump family”.