During the first defamation trial last year, former local news anchor Carol Martin testified that she remembered E. Jean Carroll confiding in her soon after the alleged assault by Donald Trump in the mid-1990s and that she told Carroll not to go public.
Martin said she didn’t remember when exactly it happened, but she knew it was some time while the two were working at the same cable network between 1994 and 1996.
By Martin’s account, the two friends had finished taping their respective shows and Carroll asked if she could come over to Martin’s home near the studio. They talked in her kitchen for about an hour, Martin testified, and Carroll was “frenzied.”
Carroll’s “effect was anxious and excitable, but she can be that way sometimes so that part wasn’t as different but what she was saying didn’t make any sense at first.” The conversation was not linear, Carroll started her account saying, “You won’t believe what happened to me the other night,” Martin recalled.
“And I didn’t know what to expect,” Martin said she felt at the time. Carroll repeatedly said, “Trump attacked me,” according to Martin.
“I think she said, ‘he pinned me’ and I still didn’t know what she meant,” Martin testified.
Martin testified that she told Carroll she shouldn’t tell anyone her story.
“Because it was Donald Trump and he had a lot of attorneys and I thought he would bury her is what I told her,” Martin said.
“I have questioned myself more times than not over the years. I am not proud that that’s what I told her in truth but she didn’t contest,” Martin added.
During cross-examination, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina read through a series of messages Martin has sent friends, many to Carroll, speaking negatively about Trump for years since he first ran for the presidency. Martin testified that as “very liberal feminist women,” they frequently discussed politics including their dislike for Trump. “We would often talk about ways to change the climate or work on issues of interest to us,” Martin testified.
Read more about her testimony in the last trial.
Source: www.cnn.com