Trump’s smear campaign against E. Jean Carroll ends in failure

Jean Carroll arrives at Manhattan federal court in New York as her defamation suit against Donald Trump resumes after a juror and lawyer fell sick on January 25, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump has hit the end of the line. On Monday, the United States Supreme Court declined to consider his appeal of a 2023 jury verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. As a result, Trump will finally have to pay Carroll $5 million. And that could just be the beginning.

Carroll publicly accused Trump of sexually abusing her in an excerpt of her memoir published by New York Magazine in 2019. In the article, Carroll said that the incident occurred in the mid 1990s in New York City in a dressing room of the department store Bergdorf Goodman.

According to Carroll, she bumped into Trump at the entrance to the store, and Trump recognized her from her advice column and show. Carroll said that Trump asked her to give him advice on a present he was buying for a girl. Carroll recommended a handbag or a hat, but Trump suggested lingerie and they went to the lingerie department. According to Carroll, Trump told her to try on a bodysuit, but Carroll jokingly told Trump to try it on himself. Trump then led her to the dressing rooms.

But once they entered the dressing room, Carroll alleged that Trump forced himself upon her. “The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips,” Carroll said. Carroll said that Trump pushed her up “against the wall with his shoulder” and pulled down her tights. Carroll alleged that Trump then “unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.” Carroll said she struggled against him before getting “a knee up high enough to push him out and off” and escaping the dressing room.

Trump’s Supreme Court appeal argued that testimony from other women who allege they were sexually assaulted by Trump and the infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump bragged about assaulting women should not have been admitted as evidence. The Supreme Court found these arguments were not worth considering.

The Supreme Court appeal was the last gasp in a lengthy smear campaign against Carroll. Since 2019, Trump has mocked, insulted, belittled, and degraded Carroll in response to her claims. In the end, none of it worked. Every court rejected Trump’s defense.

For Trump, it is a humiliating legal and political defeat.

Trump’s efforts to discredit Carroll began in 2019, in advance of the release of Carroll’s book. “I’ve never met this person in my life,” Trump said in a June 21, 2019, statement. “She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section. Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves or sell a book or carry out a political agenda.” Trump added that Carroll and others “should pay dearly for such false accusations.”

This turned out to be some of Trump’s most restrained commentary on Carroll.

In a June 24, 2019, interview with The Hill, Trump said he could not have sexually assaulted Carroll because “she’s not my type.” He said that Carroll was “totally lying.”

After Carroll filed a defamation suit against Trump in November 2019, he had little to say for an extended period of time. But he resumed his commentary on October 12, 2022, in a statement that referred to Carroll as “Ms. Bergdorf Goodman.” Trump called Carroll’s claims “a complete con job” and claimed the existence of the suit showed that the American legal system was “a broken disgrace.” According to Trump, Carroll “completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her.” He described Carroll as “a woman who I had nothing to do with, didn’t know, and would have no interest in knowing her if I ever had the chance.” Now, Trump said, “I have to… go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phony attacks on me.”

In an October 19, 2022, deposition, Trump described Carroll as “a whack job,” “a nut job,” and “a sick person.” He repeated the claim that Carroll was “not my type” but when he was shown a picture of Carroll, he mistook her for one of his ex-wives, Marla Maples.

The continued attacks prompted Carroll to file a second defamation suit, based on his more recent comments, in November 2022.

In an April 26, 2023, Truth Social post, which was later deleted, Trump asked, “Does anybody believe that I would take a then almost 60 year old woman that I didn’t know, from the front door of a very crowded department store, (with me being very well known, to put it mildly!), into a tiny dressing room, and …. her.” Trump suggested the incident could not have happened because “She didn’t scream” and “never made a police complaint.”

After a jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll and was liable for defamation on May 9, 2023, Trump posted that the “partisan Judge & Jury on the just concluded Witch Hunt Trial should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for allowing such a travesty of Justice to take place.” The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages, which every appeals court upheld and the Supreme Court declined to review Monday.

In another rant, posted later that day, Trump falsely claimed Carroll said “rape is sexy” during a CNN interview, calling the comments “incriminating.” In fact, Carroll said that “most people think of rape as being sexy” — noting that it is frequently used as a plot device in movies and television — which is why she does not describe Trump’s sexual assault as rape.

“She wasn’t raped, OK?” Trump declared during a May 10, 2023, CNN town hall, “And I didn’t do anything else either... because I don’t know who the hell she is.”

On January 4, 2024, Trump posted dozens of times on Truth Social about Carroll, repeating his previous attacks and attempting to paint her as overly sexual. Trump thought it was particularly notable that Carroll named a cat “Vagina.”

“I did nothing wrong, except defend myself from false, malicious, and defamatory accusations by somebody writing a book, and deciding to put this fake nonsense into it, probably for the publicity she would get,” Trump said as part of another long social media diatribe on January 17, 2024, as the second defamation trial began. “She was not damaged, I am the one who was damaged.”

During the second trial, Trump repeatedly accused Carroll of destroying evidence. What actually happened was that Carroll acknowledged deleting some of the death threats and other disturbing messages she received since filing the lawsuits. Trump’s lawyers claimed this was a basis for a mistrial, an argument which the judge repeatedly rejected.

On January 25, 2024, Trump testified briefly in the second trial, saying he “100%” stood behind his accusation that Carroll was a liar.

Trump lost the second trial as well, and the jury ordered him to pay Carroll $83.3 million. “Absolutely ridiculous! I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party,” Trump posted in response.

Trump’s attorneys have attempted to overturn the second Carroll verdict through a variety of means, including arguing that Trump defamed Carroll in his official capacity as president and was therefore immune from prosecution. Thus far, Trump’s efforts have been unsuccessful. In May, Trump’s lawyers asked the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to stay its ruling so Trump could appeal to the Supreme Court.

That appeal is still pending. In a Truth Social post Monday morning, Trump vowed to “continue the fight… with all of my power and strength.” But after the Supreme Court elected not to consider the appeal of the first Carroll verdict, the odds are not in Trump’s favor.