For a moment there, it was going to be the turning point of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Published one month before the 2016 election, at the exact right time to land a fatal blow on a candidacy that looked doomed, the 2005 video that has come to be known as the Access Hollywood tape contained what seemed like a disqualifying soundbite for any future politician: “When you’re a star, they let you do it … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
This week—with the start of the civil trial stemming from the rape case E. Jean Carroll filed against Trump—that video will become newly relevant to the GOP’s once and future lodestar.
That’s because last month, the federal judge presiding over the trial ruled that Carroll’s legal team could include the Access Hollywood tape as evidence to support her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. Evidence of a defendant’s general propensity for doing something is not usually admissible as proof that they committed a distinct act, but the judge decided that Carroll’s case falls within a federal exception to that norm: In civil cases “based on” an alleged sexual assault, the plaintiff can provide evidence that the defendant committed any other sexual assault.
And the Access Hollywood video can be read as exactly that kind of evidence, the judge ruled.
“A jury reasonably could find … that Mr. Trump admitted in the Access Hollywood tape that he in fact has had contact with women’s genitalia in the past without their consent, or that he has attempted to do so,” he wrote in his opinion allowing the tape as evidence.
In her opening statement on Tuesday, one of Carroll’s attorneys, Shawn Crowley, wasted no time bringing it up. After telling the jury that they could expect to view the recording during the trial, Crowley said, of Trump’s prior admission that he grabbed women’s genitals, “This is not locker room talk—it’s exactly what he did to Ms. Carroll and other women.”
On Wednesday, the jury heard Carroll recount what she says happened those decades ago. She also described the enduring effects of the trauma, including an inability to develop romantic connections with men. She testified that she has not had sex since the day of the alleged rape. “I am a happy person, basically, but I am aware that I have lost out on one of the glorious experiences of any human being: being in love with somebody else,” she said.
The first time the Access Hollywood tape was presented as evidence of Trump’s mistreatment of women, in 2016, it was in the court of public opinion. You probably remember what happened after the video dropped, because barely anything happened at all. There were light disavowals from Republican “fathers of daughters,” some lip service paid to respecting women, the “locker-room banter” defense that created a new category of immunity for men. Voters who already hated Trump hated him more, and voters who liked Trump didn’t much care. The video landed squarely on the teetering pile of other seemingly disqualifying statements by Trump, but for all its directness and nauseating specificity, it didn’t seem to make any measurable impact. Trump won the election anyway.
In the years since then, the Access Hollywood tape has served as shorthand for the entirety of Trump’s misogyny—the irrefutable smoking gun. Of all the memorable moments of bigotry and chauvinism from that campaign, including the remarks and allegations of abuse that bubbled from earlier eras in Trump’s life, the Access Hollywood tape was the most vivid encapsulation of Trump’s estimation of women’s worth.
Part of the tape’s staying power stemmed from the language Trump used, which was not just vulgar and dehumanizing, but disturbingly idiosyncratic. (You don’t hear much about women being grabbed by the pussy, as if they were misbehaving children being led to timeout by their ears.) The video has also endured in the public memory as an emblem of Trump’s maddening impunity, as it revealed how easy it was for Republicans to shrug off the remarks, fall in line, and emerge newly emboldened by the cruelty of their unapologetic leader. If this couldn’t take Trump down, or even make a noticeable dent in his outsized career ambitions, whatever could?
But now, the public narrative of that cursed video is being opened for revisions. This trial marks the chance for a victory both material and symbolic. Trump stands accused of raping Carroll and lying about it; in the lawsuit, the charges are battery and defamation. If the jury finds him guilty, Trump may be forced to pay damages and, for the first time, be labeled in the legal record as a perpetrator of sexual assault.
To be clear, the Access Hollywood recording does not carry the weight of a confession. Trump did not make those comments under oath or during any kind of lawful interrogation, and they do not directly pertain to Carroll’s allegations. But Carroll is entitled to paint for the jury an accurate picture of the man she is accusing of rape—a picture that includes both his own boastful admissions of assault and the stories of two other women, Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds, who are expected to testify for Carroll’s side that Trump assaulted them as well.
The formality of a courtroom trial will imbue these women’s stories with new meaning: no longer accusations, but testimony. Not simply painful recollections, but evidence.
For years now, Trump has smeared his accusers as vindictive, money- and attention-hungry, politically motivated liars. On Wednesday morning, about an hour before the trial kicked off for the day, he posted on Truth Social that Carroll is running a “scam” and a “witch hunt” with a “fraudulent and false story.” (The judge called the posts “entirely inappropriate” and scolded Trump’s lawyers for allowing their client to attempt to influence the jury.) Carroll’s lawsuit is proving to be a powerful rejoinder to those claims. She has friends willing to testify that she told them about the rape in the immediate aftermath. She has two other women with remarkably similar stories of Trump’s sexual aggression. What does he have? A video recording in which he marvels at the privilege of celebrities to grope women at will. In an orderly fashion and under oath, it will all be laid out for the public to judge.
For those of us following along, all of it—the restated allegations, the re-aired video, Trump’s recycled smears against his accusers—can feel like an excruciating wormhole back to the worst days of 2016. But this time, it is playing out in court. Even if Trump is exonerated, there may be closure in this treatment of Trump’s accusers with the seriousness they deserve. It is thanks to Carroll that Trump must answer to multiple allegations of sexual violence, and that a video that has come to symbolize our impotent rage at Trump’s impunity will finally be treated as the evidence it is.
Before court adjourned on Wednesday, Carroll acknowledged the significance of the venue. “To be able to get my day in court, finally, is everything to me,” she said. “I’m crying because I’m happy I got to tell my story in court.”
