Which plaintiffs testified in E. Jean Carroll v. Donald Trump and what did their testimony say?
Executive summary
E. Jean Carroll—plaintiff in the civil case—testified that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and that she told friends about the incident soon afterward; the jury credited her claim of sexual abuse though not rape and also found Trump liable for defamation, awarding $5 million [1] [2] [3]. Two other women—Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff—testified about separate alleged encounters with Trump, and news anchor Carol Martin testified she was told by Carroll about the Bergdorf incident shortly after it occurred; the district court admitted the other-witness testimony and the 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording under rules allowing evidence of similar sexual assaults, rulings later upheld on appeal [4] [3] [2].
1. E. Jean Carroll’s testimony: the core allegation and immediate aftermath
Carroll testified that in the mid-1990s, in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, Donald Trump forcibly kissed and sexually assaulted her—an event she described to friends the next day and which formed the factual heart of her civil claim; she recounted telling Carol Martin and another friend (Birnbach) at the time and later wrote about the episode in a book excerpt published in 2019 [1] [5] [6]. The jury was instructed to decide whether Carroll proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that she had been raped under New York’s definition at the relevant time and ultimately found she had not proven rape but had proven a lesser degree of sexual abuse, a finding tied directly to her testimony [2] [1].
2. Carol Martin: corroboration of a contemporaneous report
On May 4, news anchor Carol Martin testified that Carroll told her about the alleged attack soon after it occurred, giving the jury contemporaneous corroboration that Carroll had reported the incident to a friend in the 1990s; Martin placed the conversation roughly between 1994 and 1996 and denied any conspiracy to “scheme” against Trump despite some anti‑Trump texts in her phone that the defense introduced [2] [1]. The judge and later commentators treated Martin’s testimony as evidence that bolstered Carroll’s credibility by showing the claim was not a late invention, a point emphasized by Carroll’s lawyers and noted in post‑trial analysis [1] [7].
3. Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff: “other acts” testimony and the Access Hollywood tape
Two additional witnesses—Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff—testified about separate alleged encounters with Trump; their testimony was offered not to prove Carroll’s specific incident but as propensity evidence under Federal Rules of Evidence 413 and 415 to show a pattern of sexual misconduct, and the district court admitted that testimony along with the 2005 Access Hollywood recording in evidence [3] [4] [8]. Trump’s lawyers argued the admission was improper and emphasized gaps and inconsistencies in timing and memory, but the Second Circuit later found the district court’s evidentiary rulings permissible and affirmed the judgment, concluding any claimed errors were harmless [3] [8].
4. Verdict, defense challenges, and appellate posture
After a nine‑day trial the jury concluded Carroll had been sexually abused and had been defamed by Trump’s statements, awarding $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages—an outcome the defense immediately appealed, focusing on allegedly erroneous evidentiary rulings and the admission of other‑acts evidence and the recording; appellate courts have since upheld the lower court’s decisions on admissibility, with portions of the case moving through the Second Circuit and subsequent filings to higher courts [3] [4] [8]. The defense repeatedly framed witnesses’ memories and timing gaps as undermining credibility, a point the courts considered but ultimately found insufficient to overturn the jury’s findings [6] [9].