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Kerena Cobbina & Maia Davies
Donald Trump’s youngest son contacted UK police saying he witnessed a friend in London being “beat up” during a video call, a court has heard.
Barron Trump, 19, told police he had friends call 999 from the US so that he could report the alleged attack in January 2025.
Matvei Rumiantsev, 22, is on trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court accused of assault and two counts of rape, among other charges, against the alleged victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons
He denies assault, actual bodily harm, two counts of rape, intentional strangulation and perverting the course of justice by pressuring the woman to withdraw her complaints.
Trump called the alleged victim on 18 January last year, the court heard.
Shortly after placing the call, the US president’s fifth child contacted the police and said she was being assaulted.
“I’m calling from the US, uh I just got a call from a girl, you know, she’s getting beat up,” he said, according to a transcript of the call released by the Crown Prosecution Service.
“This was happening about eight minutes ago. I just figured out how to, how to call someone. Uh, uh it’s really an emergency.”
When asked by the operator how he knows the woman, he said: “I don’t think these details matter, she’s getting beat up but OK fine, also I met her on social media, I don’t think that matters.”
The operator responded: “Can you stop being rude and actually answer my questions?”
Trump was later asked by police to provide a witness statement and said in an email on 2 May that what he saw had been “very brief indeed but indeed prevalent”.
He said he had not expected that his call to the woman would be answered because of the time difference, but it was picked up by “a shirtless man with darkish hair”.
“This view lasted maybe one second”, he said, adding the view then flipped to the victim getting hit while crying.
“This whole interaction had lasted five to seven seconds.”
He continued: “I made two of my friends call the Met Police in the UK, even though they are in the US.
“As per evidence I do not have any, I was told by the victim who I am very close with that this individual was giving her difficulty for a long time.”
Rumiantsev denies the charges, which date between November 2024 and January 2025.
Prosecutors allege Rumiantsev strangled the woman the evening of 17 January last year.
She later called the police, and the Russian national was arrested on the morning of 18 January and taken into custody.
The defendant told jurors that the two had been drinking together that night and into the early morning, and had consensual sex during that time.
Giving evidence on Thursday, Rumiantsev said an argument broke out and that the woman was “completely hysterical, crying, screaming, shouting at me”.
He said he had held her arms in self-defence to prevent her from hitting him.
“I noticed her phone next to me on the sofa and it was ringing with a Barron Trump face call,” the defendant told the court.
He said he was not sure why he answered the call, but that maybe he hoped “that she wouldn’t behave like this in front of someone else.”
Earlier, the Russian national told the court that he learned about the woman’s friendship with Trump in October 2024 – when she asked him to take a photograph of a chat between them on her phone.
The court also heard he and the alleged victim had had a disagreement in November 2024.
Rumiantsev said that he had felt “upset” about her talking to Trump.
But he said: “I was in no way controlling but I was trying to make her know that if she feels unwell seeing messages I had with girls 10 years ago, she could maybe understand how I felt when she was sat there this moment texting someone else.”
The trial continues.
