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A retired businesswoman told a federal jury Tuesday that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her on an airplane decades ago, testifying in support of writer E. Jean Carroll, who has accused the former president of raping her in a department store in the mid-1990s, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Jessica Leeds, 81 years old, said that while on a plane in either 1978 or 1979, Mr. Trump pulled her toward him and tried to kiss her, then grabbed her breast.

“It’s like he had forty zillion hands,” she told jurors.

Ms. Leeds testified during the second week of the trial of the 2022 civil lawsuit filed by Ms. Carroll against Mr. Trump, which makes battery and defamation claims. Ms. Carroll has alleged that Mr. Trump raped her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City around 1996. Mr. Trump has denied the allegations and said Ms. Carroll is motivated by publicity and a desire to sell books. He has also denied Ms. Leeds’ allegations.

A lawyer for Ms. Carroll said that she expected to rest her case Thursday. Meanwhile, a lawyer for Mr. Trump told the federal judge presiding over the trial that Mr. Trump wouldn’t testify.

“It’s his call,” said U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is presiding over the trial. 

Earlier Tuesday Ms. Carroll’s lawyers sought to bolster her account by presenting a friend whom she spoke to minutes after the assault.

Lawyers for Ms. Carroll previously indicated they intended to call Ms. Leeds as a witness to show Mr. Trump has a pattern of abusing women. Another accuser is expected to testify this week. 

Ms. Leeds first spoke publicly about the alleged assault in a New York Times article a month before the 2016 election. She testified that she came forward after growing furious watching a debate between Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate, and his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. At the time, Mr. Trump defended comments he had previously made about grabbing women as “locker-room talk.”