E. Jean Carroll facing cross-examination in Trump civil rape trial as she returns to the witness stand: LIVE UPDATES

E. Jean Carroll returned to the witness stand Thursday facing a potentially tough cross-examination following her gripping testimony in Manhattan federal court describing a violent attack and rape by Donald Trump.

In searing detail, the 79-year-old Carroll Wednesday described being violently molested and raped by the former president inside a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s after they bumped into each other in a chance encounter.

After Trump asked Carroll to help him pick out a gift for an unnamed woman, she and Trump walked around the store. He then suggested they head to the unoccupied sixth-floor lingerie department to pick out underwear, Carroll said. When they got to the changing rooms, Carroll said the atmosphere changed instantly and Trump turned violent.

She went on in gruesome detail to describe the rape.

“I remember him being — he was very large. And his whole weight came against my chest, and held me up there, and he leaned down and pulled down my tights,” Carroll said. “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear that I was not going — I didn’t want anything else to happen.”

Here are highlights of today’s testimony:

Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina began his cross-examination by greeting Carroll “Good morning” without receiving a response. He then peppered the longtime advice columnist with questions about her political affiliation and her book “What Do We Need Men For A Modest Proposal,” in which she chronicled the alleged assault.

Trump has accused Carroll of fabricating the attack to sell her book.

“Only when you were trying to get a publisher and get money did this story come” out, Tacopina asked during one line of questioning.

Carroll pushed back, telling the court she was inspired to come forward after bombshell allegations were revealed against now-convicted film producer Harvey Weinstein.

“Across the country, women began telling their stories, and I was flummoxed at — wait a minute, can we actually speak up and not — and not be pummeled? Woman after woman, so, I thought, ‘Well, this may be a way to change the culture of sexual violence,” Carroll testified.

“The light dawned. I thought we could actually change things if we all — if we all — tell our stories. I thought, by God, this might be the time.

“It caused me to realize that staying silent does not work,” Carroll continued. “It does not work. If women speak up, we have a chance of limiting the harm that happens.”

In one back and forth, Tacopina asked Carroll about a part of her book where she suggested men should be “shuffled off to Montana” to get retrained.

“You understand that that was said as satire,” Carroll responded, prompting Judge Lewis Kaplan to interject to Tacopina’s ire, with the jurist citing that the idea came “from Jonathan Swift’s ‘Modest Proposal.’”

Trump’s defense attorney also pulled up a 2019 email exchange jurors saw yesterday between Carroll and Carol Martin, one of two friends she told about the assault. In the emails, Martin tells Carroll, “As soon as we’re well enuf to scheme we must do our patriotic duty again.”

Carroll responded, “TOTALLY!!! I have something special for you when we meet.”

In his opening argument Tuesday, Trump’s lawyer said Carroll and her friends hated Trump and schemed to destroy him politically.

Responding to questions on cross-examination about the exchange, Carroll said she couldn’t remember what they were talking about.

A skeptical Tacopina asked Carroll whether it was true that she couldn’t remember an email conversation from five years ago but could remember telling Martin about the assault around 28 years ago.

“Those are facts I could never forget. This is an email among probably hundreds of emails between Carol and I that I have no recollection of, but I suspect its something funny — that’s not typical Carol Martin language, ‘Patriotic duty.’ I cant imagine what it is, I have no idea,” Carroll said.

“You and Carol Martin use the word ‘scheme’ often?” Tacopina later asked.

“Not often, but she had very colorful language, and so do I.”

Tacopina, who set up a makeshift office in the courtroom cafeteria on the lunchbreak with a stack of papers and Carroll’s book, told the Daily News he expected to spend the rest of the week cross-examining Trump’s accuser.

Carroll, who first filed suit against Trump in 2019 when he called her a liar from the White House, told jurors Thursday that she had avoided reading online commentary but took a look before coming to court on Thursday when her curiosity got the better.

“I thought I would just take a peek at my Twitter,” Carroll said. “And there is was again — the onslaught, of ‘the liar,’ ‘slut,’ ‘ugly,’ ‘old.’”

“It’s just rolling,” Carroll added, fighting back tears. “It’s not a great way to begin the day, but I couldn’t be more proud to be here.”

On Wednesday, Carroll described losing her job at Elle magazine amid a flood of death threats when she spoke out as a furious then-President Trump sought to destroy her reputation. She told the jury the attack traumatized her to the point she was never intimate with someone again.

“I flirted with Donald Trump … I laughed at his jokes. I found him charming. And what happened to me when I was flirting? I got into serious trouble, and so I, after that event, I found it’s impossible for me — if I meet a man who’s a possibility — it’s impossible for me to even, well, to even look at him and smile,” Carroll said.

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“And in order to fall in love or have dinner with someone, you gotta at least look at them in the eye and smile,” she continued. “And I couldn’t — I couldn’t force myself to show a man that I liked that I liked them.”

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During the end of her time on direct examination , Carroll’s lawyer Mike Ferrera sought to get ahead of questions Trump’s lawyer was likely to pose. Trump has accused Carroll of fabricating the assault to sell books and being a democratic operative, among other allegations.

“I like attention. There’s no question. I don’t particularly like attention because I’m suing Donald. That is not, getting attention for being raped is not — it’s hard. Getting attention for making a great three-bean salad, that would be good.”

Trump has not attended his trial yet, and Tacopina doesn’t know whether he plans to. The former president, seeking the Republican presidential nomination yet again, has faced admonishments from the presiding judge for online missives about the case.

On Wednesday, Judge Lewis Kaplan told Tacopina he should have a word with his client — who’s facing a maelstrom of legal threats — about the “entirely inappropriate” comments that could pose “a new source of potential liability.”

After Carroll’s testimony, jurors will hear from two more women who have accused Trump of sexual assault, Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds, as well as close friends of Carroll’s who she told about the assault in the aftermath. They will also see the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump bragged about molesting women.