E. Jean Carroll's friend who testified in Trump case says she 'never thought this day would happen' 

A friend of E. Jean Carroll who testified Tuesday the writer called her ‘five to seven’ minutes after she was allegedly raped by Donald Trump has celebrated Carroll’s victory in court in a video interview.

Appearing remotely before MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, key witness Lisa Birnbach claimed that in the four years since she urged Carroll to come forward, the case has weighed ‘on my neck and back like no other’.

Adding that she ‘never thought this day would happen’, the award-winning journalist – whose bylines can be found in both the New Yorker and The New York Times – hailed the decision handed down by federal jurors as ‘incredible.’

Earlier in the day, Birnbach took the witness stand to sensationally claim that she was the one fellow writer Carroll first reached out to after the alleged encounter in 1996.

Her testimony was one of several handpicked by prosecutors in the civil trial to sway jurors into holding Trump liable for sexually abusing and later defaming the 79-year-old columnist, who at the time of the alleged assault was at the height of her career.

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‘It’s incredible validation – incredible vindication,’ said Birnbach, who herself is a NYT bestselling writer, of how her and Carroll’s lengthy battle to bring the case to court culminated in a $5million payout Tuesday.

‘It’s good. I feel wonderful,’ she told O’Donnell. ‘It’s been a long road.’

That road, Birnbach earlier in the day revealed, in actuality began nearly three decades ago, when she received a frantic call from Carroll claiming that she ran into Trump at the luxury department store.

At first, the two eminent Manhattanites allegedly began to shop together, with Carroll telling Birnbach, 66, she was helping Trump shop for a female friend.

At some point, Carroll said the real estate mogul led her to a dressing room, before pinning her to a wall and penetrating her with his penis.

The phone call happened minutes after the alleged assault, and Birnbach said Tuesday that throughout, Carroll did not use use the term ‘rape’ to characterize the altercation, instead calling it a ‘fight.’

Birnbach then allegedly told Carroll to go to the police, but said the writer at the time was adamant that she did not want to report the alleged incident. 

Carroll allegedly was ‘hyperventilating’ throughout the call, Birnbach said, adding that she appeared to be ‘still processing’ what had happened.

The testimony was enough for a Manhattan jury on Tuesday to find the former liable for sexually abusing Carroll, and then defaming her in a post to social media this past October.

The jury of six men and three women took only three hours to reach their verdict, acquitting Trump – who was a no show during the two weeks of testimony and claimed Tuesday that he doesn’t even know ‘who [Carroll] is’ – of rape, but finding guilty of the other two charges. 

Speaking to O’Donnell, Birnbach hailed her friend’s legal win as a sentimental victory – while not mentioning the hefty $5million in payouts awarded to Carroll.

‘I was doing errands today not thinking there would be a verdict,’ Birnbach – the writer of the 1980 tome The Official Preppy Handbook’ – explained.

‘When I got a text from a lawyer saying verdict in 15 minutes – and I hightailed it to my lawyer’s office, and I was in a conference room with the lawyers who helped me out.’

She recalled: ‘I was terrified in the few minutes waiting for it. 

‘When I heard the first ‘no,’ I panicked and thought, ‘It wasn’t going to be favorable for E. Jean Carroll.’

‘We found out that it was. I could not be happier or prouder of my friend.’ She added that she was toasting Carroll’s victory with a glass of rosé.

She added of how she and others were deposed over the past year by Trump’s attorneys, whom she said ‘used every trick in the book’ to hold up the proceedings.

‘It’s been a weight on my neck and back like no other,’ Birnbach said.

‘I really, really never thought it would happen. It just seemed to go on and on. 

‘But telling the truth is a very freeing and fortunate position to be in,’ she continued.

‘And being a good friend is a very fortunate and good position to be in.  So, right now, I feel very good.’

Earlier in the day, the jury awarded Carroll $2 million for Trump’s sexual abuse, as well as $20,000 in punitive damages, as well as an additions $1 million for the October defamation, and another $1.7 million for harm to Carroll’s reputation – as well as $280,000 more in punitive damages.

At the time of the alleged assault, Carroll was a Manhattan media celebrity in her own right – thanks to her advice column with Elle magazine, Ask E. Jean, and her cable TV show of the same name.

Trump asked her to help him choose a gift for a girl and after some ‘playful banter’ they went up to the sixth floor to the lingerie department.

As Carroll told it, she thought the whole thing was a ‘fun New York story’ – made all the more amusing when Trump told her to try on a see-through bodysuit. She told him to try it on, continuing the banter as he showed her into a changing room.

But then the mood suddenly became ‘dark’, Carroll told the jury.

Trump ‘shut the door and shoved me against the wall,’ Carroll said. She told the court: ‘I pushed him back, and he thrust me back against the wall, banging my head.

‘He put his shoulder against me and held me against the wall’.

Carroll could not see Trump as he allegedly penetrated her but she could ‘certainly feel that pain’.

After fighting him off, she ran outside and called a friend, Lisa Birnbach, a journalist, who told her to go to the police.

Carroll also spoke to Carol Martin, the former TV anchor, who told her to keep quiet as Trump would ‘bury her’.

She did exactly that for 20 years until 2019 when he had become President and she wrote a memoir publicly accusing him for the first time.

Carroll claims that Trump set out to ‘destroy’ her, calling her a liar and saying her allegations were a ‘hoax’.

She endured a deluge of hate mail and tweets and allegedly lost her job with Elle because her readers couldn’t trust her any more.

Under cross examination from Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina, Carroll became emotional when asked repeatedly why she didn’t scream.

‘Mr Tacopina,’ Carroll said, ‘I was born in 1943. I am a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught and trained to keep our chins up and to not complain.

‘The fact that I never went to the police is not surprising for someone my age. We were not ever trained to call the police, ever. I would rather have done anything than call the police’.

When Tacopina repeatedly asked why Carroll didn’t scream, she fired back: ‘You can’t beat up on me for not screaming’.

Carroll cried and uttered one of the most memorable lines of the trial: ‘I’m telling you, he raped me, whether I screamed or not!’

Judge Kaplan allowed other accusers to give evidence in what Carroll hoped proved a pattern of behavior.

Tacopina told jurors that Carroll invented her claims after hearing about a 2012 ‘Law and Order’ episode in which a woman is raped in the dressing room of the lingerie section of a Bergdorf Goodman store.

Carroll ‘cannot produce any objective evidence to back up her claim because it didn’t happen,’ he told jurors. 

He accused her of ‘advancing a false claim of rape for money, for political reasons and for status.’

In questioning Carroll, he sought to cast doubt on her description of fighting off the far heavier Trump without dropping her handbag or ripping her tights, and without anyone around to hear or see them in the lingerie section.

The lawyer pressed her about – by her own account – not screaming, looking for help while fleeing the store or seeking out medical attention, security video or police.

Carroll reproached him.

‘I’m telling you he raped me, whether I screamed or not,’ she said.

There is no possibility of Trump being charged with attacking Carroll, as the legal time limit has long since passed.

For similar reasons, she initially filed her civil case as a defamation lawsuit, saying Trump’s derogatory denials had subjected her to hatred, shredded her reputation and harmed her career.

Last fall New York state gave people a chance to sue over sexual assault allegations that would otherwise be too old. Carroll was one of the first to file.