Trump lawyer quizzes E. Jean Carroll about 'scheming' with her friend before going public with rape allegation

• Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina questioned rape accuser E. Jean Carroll on the stand on Thursday.
• Tacopina brought Carroll's motivations for publicly accusing Trump of rape into question.

Donald Trump's lawyer tried to suggest to a jury Thursday that the former president's rape accuser made up the story as part of an effort to "stop" the politician.

Attorney Joe Tacopina questioned longtime Elle advice columnist E. Jean Carroll on the stand in Manhattan federal court, drawing attention to an email she received from a friend, Carol Martin, in September 2017.

Martin is one of the two women Carroll says she told that Trump had raped her immediately after the alleged incident in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s.

Carroll is suing Trump for battery and defamation.

The email Martin sent Carroll in September 2017 included a link to a humorous New Yorker column mocking Trump, who Martin called "orange crush."

"This has to stop," Martin wrote at the time. "As soon as we're both well enough to scheme, we must do our patriotic duty again."

"TOTALLY!!!" Carroll responded. "I have something special for you when we meet."

E. Jean Carroll said the #MeToo movement prompted her to name Trump as her rapist

Carroll said she didn't remember what she meant when she said she had "something special" for Martin, and said that the two often used the word "scheme" in a casual way.

"She has very colorful language and so do I," Carroll said Thursday of Martin.

Tacopina drew particularly attention to the fact that, two weeks after the email exchange, Carroll began work on "What Do We Need Men For?" — the book where she would ultimately accuse Trump of rape publicly.

Carroll tried to downplay the connection, saying she never planned to include Trump in the book when she was first sketching it out.

Carroll said her initial idea for the book was meant to be an exploration of why women seem to have so many issues with men. She said she planned to go on a road trip and interview women across the country to learn more about this issue.

But her idea for the book began to shift the day she set out on the trip, when the sexual misconduct accusations against film producer Harvey Weinstein broke — setting off the #MeToo movement, she said.

As more and more women across the country came forward with their own stories of sexual misconduct, Carroll said she began to think about telling her own stories, and began putting together a list in her head of the men who had wronged her.

During direct testimony on Wednesday, Carroll said that Trump entered her mind, but that she wasn't initially sure she wanted to include him because he was a sitting president. Eventually, she had a change of heart.

"I just said, E. Jean, don't be a chicken. Put the man on the list. He is the worst of all," Carroll testified. "So I did it."

In addition to Martin, Carroll said she told another friend, Lisa Birnbach, of the alleged rape right after it happened.

Both Martin and Birnbach are expected to testify during the trial.

Carroll said the women are the only two people she told about the rape until she went public with the story in 2019, when New York magazine published an excerpt from her book.

When Trump loudly denied her claim in statements to the press — saying Carroll was not his "type" and that she made up the story to sell her memoir — Carroll sued him for defamation.

In her lawsuit, Carroll says that Trump's comments have "injured the reputation on which she makes her livelihood as a writer, advice columnist, and journalist."

Tacopina is expected to continue questioning Carroll when the trial resumes on Monday.