E. Jean Carroll's lawyer said Trump 'was basically a witness against himself'

• E. Jean Carroll's lawyer said Donald Trump was "a witness against himself."
• Roberta Kaplan added that Trump's decision to not testify in the trial helped their case.

Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer representing E. Jean Carroll in her rape trial against Donald Trump, said the former President was "basically a witness against himself" the morning after a jury found Trump liable of sexually abusing Carroll in 1996.

In a Wednesday morning interview with Savannah Guthrie on the Today Show, Guthrie asked Carroll and Kaplan whether Trump's decision not to testify in the trial, coupled with his bombshell deposition, helped their case against him.

"There's no question that both of those things helped our case," Kaplan said.

She added that the jury saw 11 witnesses brought to testify on behalf of their case, including Carroll herself, who took the stand for more than two days "under oath and told the truth."

"On the other hand," Kaplan continued, "He didn't even bother to show up and in his deposition, he made admissions where he was basically a witness against himself," referring to a moment in the deposition when Kaplan asked Trump about the infamous Access Hollywood tape that leaked in 2016.

"He answered, believe it or not, that 'unfortunately, or fortunately, men have been able to get away with abusing women for millions of years,'" Kaplan recalled Trump saying.

In his deposition, Trump's comment came after he said anyone who is a "star" can largely get away with grabbing women.

"If you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true," Trump said in the deposition. "Unfortunately or fortunately."

Joe Tacopina, Trump's lawyer in the case, declined to comment on Kaplan's statement except to say that Trump maintains his innocence and will be appealing.

"This was a civil case, where the burden of proof is 51%, not a criminal case, and this jury still rejected her rape claim. Which is what she was claiming all along," Tacopina told Insider Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a Manhattan jury unanimously found Trump liable of sexually abusing Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996. The jury also found that Trump defamed her by denying the story, which she told publicly in an article for New York Magazine in 2019.

Jurors took two-and-a-half hours to come to their decision, which Kaplan said was "lightning speed." The jury awarded Carroll $5 million total in damages.