Access Hollywood Tape Can Be Used Against Trump

E. Jean Carroll, who is suing former President Donald Trump, won on a couple of issues in federal court on Friday. District Judge Lewis Kaplan decided that Carroll, who accuses Trump of raping her in the 1990s, can use the 2005 Access Hollywood recording in court in which the former president talks about grabbing women's genitalia, Politico reports. "When you’re a star, they let you do it," Trump says on the tape. "You can do anything." Although Carroll's filing is a defamation suit, Kaplan said she must prove Trump sexually assaulted her to prevail on "Trump's charge that her story was a lie."

The ruling says that "a jury reasonably could find" from just the recording that Trump "has had contact with women's genitalia in the past without their consent, or that he has attempted to do so." Kaplan also decided to allow Carroll, a New York columnist, to use the testimony of two other women who have accused Trump of sexual assault in court, over the former president's objections. The judge said most of the evidence that Trump is trying to keep from the jury "is to the effect that Mr. Trump allegedly has abused or attempted to abuse women other than Ms. Carroll in ways that are comparable to what he allegedly did to Ms. Carroll," per NBC News. (More Donald Trump stories.)