E. Jean Carroll choked during testimony of alleged Trump rape

E. Jean Carroll testified she can “still feel” the pain, choking up in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday as she recounted Donald Trump allegedly raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room nearly three decades ago.

The roughly five hours on the witness stand — during which Carroll, 79, became emotional a few times — culminated with her sobbing about finally being able to get her day in court.

“I regretted this about a hundred times,” Carroll said, after her lawyer asked if she wished she hadn’t come forward with her claims.

“But in the end,” she continued, crying, “being able to get my day in court finally is everything to me. So I am happy.”

Earlier, Carroll’s voice broke as she told jurors she always wondered “why I walked in” to the department store changing room — where she alleged Trump “shoved” and pinned her against a wall, pulled her tights down and forced his fingers inside her before raping her.

“As I am sitting here today, I can still feel” the pain, Carroll, 79, testified.

“I always think back to why I walked in there,” Carroll said, as her voice broke, “to get myself in that situation.”

The former journalist took the stand on the second day of trial in her lawsuit accusing Trump, 76, of raping her in the spring of 1996 and then defaming her when he denied her claims decades later.

The former president was not in court for her testimony and also did not attend the start of the proceedings on Tuesday.

Carroll described how she ran into the real estate mogul at the Fifth Avenue store — which was across from Trump Tower.

The pair began “flirting” and bantering, she claimed.

Trump asked Carroll, then 52, to help him find a gift for a woman, which “delighted” Carroll — who as the advice columnist of Elle magazine’s “Ask E. Jean” loved the prospect of giving the prominent New York City personality advice on a present.

Carroll said Trump took her up to the lingerie department, where he tossed a sheer gray lace bodysuit at her and told her to try it on — prompting her to joke back that he should try it on.

Carroll said she thought at the time that the encounter would make a “great story.”

“He said ‘Let’s try this on’ and motioned toward the dressing room,” Carroll recalled.

Once inside, Trump closed the door and “shoved” her against the wall, bumping her head, she claimed.

Carroll pushed him back but he shoved her a second time, knocking her head again — and pinned her against the wall before pulling her tights down, Carroll testified.

Trump then allegedly raped Carroll before she was finally able to break free after she managed to lift her knee and shove him off, she recounted.

She then fled the store, she claimed.

She told the jury it was “very stupid” of her to walk into a changing room, noting the door was open.

“And that open door has plagued me for years because I just walked into it,” she said.

Carroll said she felt shame and blame for the attack for walking into the room, and because she had been flirting with Trump leading up to the moment of the alleged attack.

“I know people have been through a lot worse than this,” Carroll testified.

“But it left me unable to ever have a romantic life again.”

She said she hasn’t had sex since the alleged incident because she couldn’t bring herself to flirt.

“I think it’s because flirting ended up as the worst decision of my life,” she said.

“I am aware that I have lost out on one of the glorious experiences as a human being — being in love with somebody else,” Carroll said.

Carroll said while an ex-husband had physically abused her and a camp counselor had molested her when she was 12, after both she was still able to carry on with her love life and neither contributed to why she hasn’t dated in the last 25 years.

Asked why she had no love life anymore, Carroll responded: “The short answer is because Donald Trump raped me.”

She explained that she’s suffered visions of the alleged rape throughout the years which she has learned to move “aside.”

After pulling over to take a quick nap while driving one night, Carroll said she woke up with a vision of Trump on top of her.

“I thought for a minute I was going to die because I couldn’t breathe,” Carroll said of the vision.

Carroll began crying as she told jurors about how her public persona is “vibrant” and strong while her private self is “the one that can’t admit out loud that there has been any suffering.”

Carroll’s lawyer Michael Ferrara paused his questioning to offer his client some tissues, which she used to wipe her eyes.

Carroll told friends about the alleged rape — one right after and one the next day.

The first friend told her to go to the police, while the other warned Carroll that Trump would bury her legally.

Carroll wouldn’t go public with her accusations until 2019, when she wrote about the alleged assault in a book — an excerpt of which was published in New York Magazine.

In October 2019, Trump claimed Carroll’s claims were a “hoax,” claimed to not know her, and said she wasn’t his “type.”

Carroll sued Trump in November for the alleged rape and for allegedly defaming her by denying the claims.

Earlier in Carroll’s testimony, she told the jury: “I am here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen.

“He lied and shattered my reputation and I’m here to get my life back.”

During her testimony, the jury was shown a photo of Trump and Carroll with their respective spouses at the time, Ivana Trump and news anchor John Johnson.

Carroll said she had the photo from a party she attended when she first met Trump around 1987.

Trump has claimed he didn’t know Carroll and that nothing happened between them.

Carroll said she was shocked by Trump’s denial of the events, having instead expected that he would have claimed the Bergdorf encounter was consensual.

“He said it didn’t happen. He was there, he knows it happened,” she said.

Carroll — who said she is a registered Democrat — told the jury that she didn’t bring the lawsuit against Trump for political reasons.

“I’m settling a personal score because he called me a liar repeatedly and it really has decimated my reputation as a journalist,” Carrol said. “The one thing I have to have is the trust of the readers.”

Carroll said that she was fired from her longtime job at Elle and lost her 8 million readers, and now only has some 17,000 followers that read a column that she puts out independently.

She also seemed to try to dispel Trump’s claims that she had made up the rape allegation to boost her book sales — testifying that her memoir actually didn’t sell well and she never received more than the $70,000 book advance.

The writer became overwhelmed when Ferrara asked her if she regretted coming forward because of the fallout it had on her life — and he asked her a few times if she needed to take a break to compose herself. 

“I am going to get myself together,” Carroll said. “I am in court, this is my moment. I am not going to sit here and cry and waste everybody’s time,” Carroll said, shortly before she was dismissed from the stand for the day.

During opening remarks Tuesday, Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, claimed Carroll “is abusing the system by advancing a false claim of rape for money, for political reasons and for status.”

Before trial Wednesday, Trump posted on his platform Truth Social that the case is “a made up SCAM,” prompting Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan to chide Tacopina about his client’s “entirely inappropriate” post.

Tacopina told the judge he’d ask Trump to stop posting about the case.

The issue of social media posts was raised again after lunch and before the jury was brought back in about a tweet by Eric Trump on the trial.

The tweet — which has since been removed — accused LinkedIn founder and billionaire Reid Hoffman of paying Carroll’s legal bills.

Trump’s lawyers have previously raised their concerns on the source of Carroll’s legal funding but Judge Kaplan has barred the topic from coming into trial.

On Wednesday afternoon, Judge Kaplan addressed Eric Trump’s tweet saying once again that Trump and his son were “sailing in harms way” legally speaking.

Tacopina said Eric Trump “didn’t do anything wrong” but said he would address the post “with the relevant parties.”

Carroll is set to continue testifying Thursday.