What evidence and witness accounts support Ivana Trump's sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump?

1. The core documentary claim: Ivana’s sworn divorce deposition

The primary piece of evidence cited across reporting is Ivana Trump’s own testimony in the divorce proceedings, in which she described an incident in 1989 and used the word “rape” in the deposition that was later excerpted and published by biographer Harry Hurt III and others; multiple outlets summarize that she accused Donald Trump of raping her during the marriage in that filing ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

2. How that deposition entered the public record and was reported

The passage from Ivana’s deposition was publicized in Hurt’s 1993 book and resurfaced in later reporting (including a 2015 Daily Beast piece and subsequent coverage), and journalists have cited the deposition as the source for her allegation; outlets such as The Guardian and the New Yorker-era reporting trace the allegation to those divorce records and the Hurt account ^{[3] [5] [2]}.

3. Ivana’s subsequent statements and apparent recantation

After the allegation circulated in the early 1990s and when the matter re-emerged in later political coverage, Ivana issued statements that downplayed or recharacterized the use of the word “rape,” saying she did not mean it “in a literal or criminal sense” and later calling the story “totally without merit” in a 2015 public comment; she also made public gestures toward reconciling the record, including endorsing Donald Trump politically years later, which the press has noted as complicating a straightforward reading of her earlier deposition ^{[2] [3] [6] [4]}.

4. Corroboration, contemporaneous evidence, and archival status

Reporting to date shows no widely published contemporaneous police report or criminal charge connected to Ivana’s deposition claim; news organizations and fact-checkers note that the public record beyond her sworn words consists mainly of that deposition as reported by biographers and journalists, and some authors and outlets have sought access to sealed divorce files to clarify details ^{[7] [8] [3]}.

5. Responses, denials, and legal framing from Trump’s side

Trump’s legal team and associates disputed the allegation when it was publicized, with Michael Cohen (then a lawyer for Trump) aggressively attacking reporters and asserting defenses including, in one reported instance, the claim—now widely recognized as legally dubious in many jurisdictions—that a spouse cannot be raped; campaign spokespeople and Trump himself have denied the account, embedding the deposition dispute in a broader pattern of denials around other allegations ^{[3] [2]}.

6. Weighing the evidentiary picture and competing narratives

Taken strictly on evidentiary terms as presented in mainstream reporting, the support for Ivana’s allegation rests principally on her sworn deposition (as reported by biographers and journalists) plus secondary summaries and later denials; there is no cited contemporaneous police investigation or independent corroborating witness account published in the sources provided here, and Ivana’s later public statements that softened or rejected the literal meaning of “rape” are part of the record and reduce the clarity of the accusation as a provable criminal claim ^{[1] [2] [3] [7]}. Alternative interpretations exist: some journalists treat the deposition as a credible sworn account of severe marital violence, while others emphasize Ivana’s later disavowal and the absence of external corroboration; the campaign context and later political rapprochement between Ivana and Donald Trump are implicit pressures that shape how sources and readers evaluate the deposition ^{[3] [6]}.