Trump lawyers scramble to exclude Access Hollywood clip from rape trial

In a legal filing on Friday, attorneys for Donald Trump asked to exclude a video clip of the former president boasting that he could sexually assault women at will because he was famous from evidence in the trial related to the sexual assault of writer E. Jean Carroll.

Carroll has accused the former president of raping her in a dressing room in the mid-1990s and her case was given the go-ahead to proceed by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Federal District Court in Manhattan based upon a law passed in 2022.

Now, as the case proceeds, Trump's attorneys are seeking to bar the infamous "Access Hollywood' video in which Trump boasted, ""I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab 'em by the p---y. You can do anything."

According to the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, Trump's lawyers feel the clip is inflammatory and has no bearing on Carroll's case.

According to the Beast report, "In a legal memo to a federal judge on Friday, defense lawyers wrote that Trump’s 2005 comments—'when you’re a star, they let you do it… you can do anything… grab 'em by the p---y' —are entirely distinct from any accusation that he raped someone."

The attorneys continued by asserting that the tape "“does not share any unique characteristics to this case or demonstrate a modus operandi or pattern of misconduct. Here, the actions described on the tape bear little resemblance to the actions that allegedly took place in or around 1995.”

They also complained that Carroll's attorneys are attempting to "convert this trial into a referendum on [Trump’s] character and distract the jury.”

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