Trump mistakes sexual assault accuser for ex-wife Marla in testimony: Report

Former United States President Donald Trump mistook his sexual assault accuser E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples in testimony for her suit against him. Trump was married to Maples his second wife, from 1993 to 1999. He mistook Carroll for his ex-wife during a deposition at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida on October 19 last year.

Excerpts of the deposition, which were released on Tuesday (January 17), saw Trump potentially undermining one of his defences against Carroll's allegation that he raped her in the changing room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s.

Carroll, who is a journalist and an author, accused Trump of sexual assault and defamation after the former President said in an interview with "The Hill" in 2019 that she was lying and simply trying to market her book, news agency AFP reported on Thursday.

During the October 19 deposition, Trump was asked about the alleged incident to which he replied, "Physically she's not my type, and now that I've gotten indirectly to hear things about her, she wouldn't be my type in any way, shape, or form."

However, when Trump was shown a photograph of himself with Carroll and others at a reception in the 1990s. Trump replied, "That's Marla, that's my wife," before being corrected by his lawyer.

Initially, E. Jean Carroll had not gone public with the allegations of the incident. But in 2019, she divulged the details in her book. In October last year, Trump took to social media to call her story "a hoax and a lie" and her book "a complete scam." A month later, after a New York law designed to protect sexual assault victims decades after the crime took place came into effect, Carroll expanded her case by suing him for assault, the AFP report added.

In October last year, the court had taken depositions from both parties in the defamation case and the trial would now open on April 10. The report pointed out that Trump could be protected in the case as he made the initial statements against Carroll while he was serving as President.

(With inputs from agencies)

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