By Donald Trump present in courtauthor E. Jean Carroll said in her grand jury testimony Wednesday that the former US president tarnished her name and should compensate her for denying in 2019 that he raped her decades ago.

“I’m here because Donald Trump attacked me and when I wrote about it he said it never happened,” Carroll testified in Manhattan federal court where her second lawsuit against the tycoon is being heard. “He lied and ruined my reputation”he said.

Last May, another court ordered Trump to pay $5 million to the former Elle magazine columnist, alleging that he sexually assaulted her inside a Bergdorf Goodman department store and defamed her in 2022, when she denied any such thing happened.

In today’s trial Carol asks additional compensation of at least $10 million. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is presiding over the proceedings, has already ruled that Trump defamed Carroll in 2019 and that he sexually assaulted her in the department store’s fitting rooms in the 1990s. The lawsuit concerns statements Trump made in June 2019, when he was president of the USA. He had said at the time that he did not know Carol and that she was calling him a rapist to promote her memoir.

The 77-year-old Trump, in the midst of his election campaign, has often used his legal adventures to attract supporters and raise funds, claiming he is facing political persecution. Even after the trial began, he used his platform, Truth Social, to criticize Carroll.

In response to questions from her attorney, Roberta Kaplan (née Judge), Carroll said Trump’s comments they damaged her reputation for telling the truth and at the same time exposed her to online attacks. “I’ve been attacked on Twitter, I’ve been attacked on Facebook, I’ve been attacked on news blogs, I’ve been viciously attacked by text. It was a new world,” he said. She also described that she used to get 200 letters a month from readers asking for her advice but now it’s down to 8.

The attacks against Carol have not stopped. “Yesterday I opened Twitter (now Platform X) and someone wrote: ‘Hey, lady, you’re a fraud.’ Now I’m known as a liar, a fraud and a prankster,” she said.

Trump he had called her a “slut”.

The former president’s advocates argue that the author was only harmed by the “maliciousness” of other people on social networking sites and that she herself was seeking media attention. “Apart from a few malicious messages, Ms. Carroll is now more famous than she’s ever been in her life and loved and respected by many, as was her goal,” said lawyer Alina Haba.

The trial is expected to last 3-5 days. Trump was not present at the first trial, but has now said he wants to testify. Judge Kaplan, however, denied the defense’s request to postpone the trial so that the former president could attend. at his mother-in-law’s funeral tomorrow Thursday in Florida.