Trump to call Anderson Cooper to the stand at rape accuser's defamation trial: report

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are planning to call CNN's Anderson Cooper to testify in an upcoming civil trial for a lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, in which she's suing Trump for sexual battery.

The New York Daily News reports that both Trump and Carroll are listed as the first potential witness their lawyers will call.

Along with Cooper, Trump's lawyers will call New York Magazine editor David Haskell, and some of Carroll’s friends.

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham is among the witnesses Carroll's lawyers will call.

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Carroll has another filed suit against Trump claiming sexual battery. Manhattan Federal Court Judge Lewis Kaplan has yet to say if he'll consolidate the two suits.

Excerpts of a deposition of Trump released last month saw him potentially undermine one of his key defenses against Carroll's allegation that he raped her in a New York department store changing room in the mid-1990s.

Trump stunningly mistook his sexual assault accuser E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples in testimony for her suit against the former president.

Carroll, now 79, has sued Trump for both sexual assault and for defamation after he said in a 2019 interview with "The Hill" that she was "totally lying" and simply trying to market her book.

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In the October 19 deposition, Trump repeated his oft-made claim that he could not have pursued or raped her in the changing rooms at the Bergdorf Goodman store because he is not attracted to women who look like Carroll.

"I'll say it with great respect. Number one, she's not my type. Number two, it never happened," he said.

Asked directly in the deposition about the alleged incident, he repeated the statement.

"Physically she's not my type, and now that I've gotten indirectly to hear things about her, she wouldn't be my type in any way, shape, or form."

But when he was shown a picture of himself with Carroll and others at a reception in the 1990s, Trump said, "That's Marla, that's my wife," before being corrected by his own attorney.

Trump, 76, was married to Maples, his second wife, from 1993 to 1999. He began dating his current wife Melania Trump in 1998.

With additional reporting by AFP