E Jean Carroll says she sued for rape on advice of Trump adviser’s husband

The advice columnist E Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for rape after she was encouraged to take legal action by George Conway, the husband of a top aide to the then president.

On her third day on the witness stand, Carroll told the jury hearing her lawsuit for battery and defamation over the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store changing room in 1996 that she did not intend to sue Trump until he called her a liar when she went public with her accusations more than two decades later.

Shortly afterwards she met Conway, a lawyer who was at the time married to Kellyanne Conway, one of the Trump White House's most visible officials. George Conway was a vocal critic of the then president, to the embarrassment of his wife.

Carroll said that they spoke at a party where Conway laid out the difference between criminal case and civil cases.

"George said: you should seriously think about this," she told the jury of six men and three women.

Two days later, Carroll filed her first lawsuit against Trump, for defamation, after he called her a liar in denying the alleged rape at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman store.

Trump's lawyer, Joe Tacopina, sought to characterise the lawsuit as politically motivated, in part through the association with Conway who went on to recommend a lawyer to Carroll.