A friend of former columnist E. Jean Carroll took the stand in the defamation trial against former President Donald Trump Tuesday, testifying that Carroll was "hyperventilating" when the writer said she had been raped by him.
“I am here because my friend, my good friend, who was a good person, told me something terrible that happened to her, and as a result, she lost her employment, and her life became very, very difficult,” said Lisa Birnbach, 66, who is also an author and journalist.
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Birnbach's testimony followed two full days of cross-examination by Trump attorney Joseph Tacopina, who is seeking to convince a nine-member jury that his client did not sexually assault Carroll in the mid-1990s.
The longtime friend recalled how a "breathless, hyperventilating, emotional" Carroll sounded when she called her just after Trump allegedly raped her inside a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room. Carroll maintains she doesn't remember the exact date of the alleged incident, but Birnbach stated Tuesday she thinks she was informed about Carroll's story in the spring of 1996.
“Her voice was doing all kinds of things,” Birnbach said of Carroll, who is now 79. “She might have been laughing. It sounded like she had a surge of adrenaline.”
Carroll told her friend over the phone about encountering the real estate mogul on her way to the high-end department store before he convinced her to help him shop for a gift.
Birnbach testified that she thought it was "kind of nutty" at first when Carroll agreed to go to the lingerie section with Trump. She contended that she didn't think it would be "dangerous" because Birnbach had recently spent time with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in January 1996 for a story that ran on Feb. 12 that year.
Tacopina later engaged in cross-examination with Birnbach, asking about her political affiliations, to which she agreed when asked if she had ever called Trump "demented" or a "Russian agent."
An attorney for Carroll later rebuffed Tacopina's line of questioning, asking if Birnbach would "lie to stop Trump from being president?"
"No," Birnbach said. She testified at several points throughout the trial that her presence and testimony were in support of her friend, Carroll.
“I’m here because I’m her friend, and I want the world to know she is telling the truth," Birnbach said.
Another witness for Carroll, former stockbroker Jessica Leeds, took the stand later on Tuesday. Leeds has accused Trump of assaulting her on an airplane in the late 1970s.
Leeds, an 81-year-old who first came forward with her allegations during the 2016 presidential election, said it felt as if Trump had "40 zillion hands" when he allegedly groped her on a flight to New York around 1979.
Leeds said her alleged encounter with Trump occurred after a flight attendant invited her to sit in first class.
“The guy sitting beside me, his eyes were like saucers,” Leeds said of witnesses to the alleged groping. “I remember thinking, ‘Where is the stewardess, and why doesn’t somebody come and help me.’ I realized no one was going to help me, and I had to do it myself."
Leeds added that the year after the incident, in 1981, she encountered Trump with his then-wife Ivana Trump. She alleged Trump said: "I remember you ... You're that c*** woman from the airplane."
Carroll's legal team called Leeds to show jurors that Trump has a history of sexual misconduct allegations. Her team also plans to play a snippet from the infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump said in a recorded tape that he could grab other women by the vagina when he wanted to.
Carroll is suing the former president for defamation after he denied her rape allegations publicly. The former magazine columnist is also suing for battery under a New York state law that provides adult victims a one-year window to sue their alleged abuser despite the previous statute of limitations barriers.
Trump denies the allegations from Carroll and the witnesses her team brought before the Manhattan court.
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The jury is composed of six men and three women. It would only take one person to side with Trump for him to avoid liability. If the jury unanimously votes to hold him liable, Trump could owe millions of dollars to his accuser.
The judge presiding over the trial, Lewis Kaplan, said he would determine the content of the instructions for the jury on either Friday or Monday, signaling the possibility of an imminent verdict for next week.