'She's not my type': Donald Trump doubles down on sexual assault allegations made by Jean Carroll
President Trump has reportedly doubled down against the sexual assault allegations leveled on him by former journalist and columnist E. Jean Carroll.
"I'll say it with great respect: Number one, she's not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?" President Trump said in an interview with The Hill.
"I love that," Carroll responded during a CNN interview on Monday, June 24. "I'm so glad I'm not his type."
Trump emphasized he and Carroll had never met despite a candid photo of him having a conversation with her and her husband John Johnson at a 1987 NBC event surfacing recently. "Standing with a coat on in a line - give me a break - with my back to the camera. I have no idea who she is," the president said on June 22, dismissing the photo.
Carroll previously claimed she would consider pressing charges against him. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, meanwhile, promised a full investigation into her claims once she filed a formal report with law enforcement.
"Totally lying. I don’t know anything about her. I know nothing about this woman. I know nothing about her," Trump said on June 24. "She is — it's just a terrible thing that people can make statements like that."
Mayor de Blasio was in South Carolina over the weekend to gear up for the first debate of the presidential primary season, when he was asked what he would do about Carroll's claims. "The moment we in New York City and our police department have a complaint, we will investigate immediately. We will find out the truth," said de Blasio, calling the allegations against the president "the most serious of charges".
Carroll, however, remained skeptical on whether a formal complaint would make any difference to President Trump in an interview that aired on June 24 morning on New Day.
While there was a five-year statute around the time Carroll alleges she was attacked, lawmakers lifted the same in 2006 for all reports of first-degree rape. An individual in New York can be charged with the "most serious offense" by "compelling the victim through the use of physical force or the threat of immediate death, physical injury or kidnapping", participating in sexual intercourse with a person who is "incapable of consent by reason" or if the person is underage.
However, the Supreme Court ruled in Stronger v/s California that an individual cannot be charged retroactively with a crime if the state of limitations on reporting an offense is changed by lawmakers themselves.
Carroll admitted she had not informed law enforcement about the alleged assault at the time. Carroll told MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on June 21 that she would not be pressing charges against Trump even now.
"I would find it disrespectful to the women on the border who are being raped around the clock down there without any protection," she said. "They're young women. These women have very little protection there and it would just be disrespectful."
"Mine was three minutes, I am a mature woman, I can handle it, I can keep going. My life has gone on, I am a happy woman," Carroll continued. "But for the women down there, and for the women actually around the world, in every culture, this is going on, no matter high in society or low in society it just seems disrespectful, it just doesn't make sense to me."