The testimony of Carroll’s friend after the alleged rape by Trump

() — During the rape and defamation trial against former President Trump, a friend of E. Jean Carroll testified Tuesday that the former journalist called her minutes after she was allegedly raped by Donald Trump in a New York warehouse in 1996.

Lisa Birnbach recounted how Carroll called her minutes after leaving the warehouse and detailed the altercation.

Birnbach said that Carroll sounded “breathless, hyperventilated, emotional. Her voice was all kinds of things” when she called.

“He pulled my tights down, he pulled my tights down,” Carroll repeated over the phone, according to Birnbach. “As if she couldn’t believe it. She was still processing what she had happened to her. She had just happened to her.”

On the stand, Birnbach said she remembered she was feeding her young children in her kitchen at the time when Carroll called and left the room to whisper “‘E. Jean has raped you. You should go to the police.'” Carroll described the altercation with Trump as a fight, he didn’t want to hear the word “rape,” Birnbach said.

“It seemed like a physical fight where she was trying to get away from him and she didn’t want him to say that word,” Birnbach testified. Carroll refused to go to the police and made her friend promise that she would never speak of it again.

After the phone call that lasted just a few minutes, both did not speak of the subject again until 2019, according to Birnbach. “It was her life, her story, not my story. She clearly didn’t want to tell anyone what happened and I respected that.”

He never contacted Carroll to find out how he was doing, Birnbach added. “I promised him I wouldn’t bring it up, I wouldn’t talk about it and I wouldn’t tell anyone, so I buried it and as time went on it became easier not to think about it.”

Carroll sued Trump, alleging that he raped her at the Bergdorf Goodman warehouse in the mid-1990s and then smeared her when he denied her claim, said she wasn’t his type, and suggested she made up the story to boost sales of her book. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

After Birnbach publicly identified herself in 2019 as Carroll’s friend referenced in her book, Birnbach said she gave a few interviews to the media to support Carroll. “Because she was telling the truth, because my friend was telling the truth, and I felt strongly that she could be a helpful friend.”

Birnbach acknowledged that he does not like Trump and has spoken publicly against him at length on social media and on his podcast. Under cross-examination, Trump’s attorney, W. Perry Brandt, read a long list of those posts.