Former President Donald Trump arrived at a snow-covered Manhattan federal courthouse on Tuesday for the start of the penalty phase of his defamation lawsuit brought by former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll.
Fresh off his big win in the Iowa caucuses the night before, Trump could be forced to pay Carroll more than $10 million in damages for allegedly dragging her name and reputation through the mud after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1995.
Trump vehemently denied the allegations, claiming he had “never met this person in my life” and that she was “not my type,” and accused Carroll of using his name to sell her book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.
He also accused her of being part of a political witch hunt hellbent on killing his political aspirations.
Carroll sued Trump in 2019, claiming his denials and verbal attacks damaged her reputation. At the time, Carroll could only sue Trump for defamation because the statute of limitations for sexual assault had expired. However, in 2022, New York lawmakers passed the Adult Survivors Act, which gave survivors of sexual assault or rape one year to file civil suits against their alleged abusers. Carroll was among the first to file a lawsuit under the new act.
The judge has already found Trump liable for defaming Carroll, and in May, a jury awarded her more than $2 million after he wrote on Truth Social in October 2022 that her claims against him were a “complete con job” and a “hoax and a lie.”
Tuesday’s proceedings involve a separate case.
The jury’s only task will be to decide how much money Trump has to pay Carroll for mocking her claims while he was president of the United States, as well as remarks he made after a different jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation last year.
Even though the former president and Republican front-runner was instructed to rein in his rhetoric ahead of the trial, he took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to blast the proceedings.
Trump suggested in a post that there’s no way he would have met Carroll several decades ago because he has been long considered an “A-List celebrity.” He added he has been “wrongfully accused by a woman he never met, saw, or touched (a photo line does not count!), and knows absolutely nothing about.”
“I have been considered an A-List celebrity for many decades, so even decades ago, since no one knows which date or dates to refer to, because the accusing woman can’t say the day, month, season, year, or decade, it would have been impossible for me to walk into a crowded department store (surrounded by buildings I own), right opposite the cashiers’ checkout desk, without being written about on Page Six, and every other outlet at the time. Remember, those gossip columnists were, perhaps, even more vicious and obsessed than the Internet of today.”
Even as he sat in the Manhattan courtroom, posts on Truth Social kept popping up in which Trump viewed himself as the victim and claimed Judge Lewis Kaplan was being blinded by “his absolute hatred of Donald J. Trump (ME!).”
On page two of this three-page rant, Trump claimed Carroll “changed her FALSE ‘Monica Lewinsky-type’ story on the DRESS, which she taunted us with, after it was proven to have no connection to me. She has been ‘all over the place’ on the timing of this alleged ‘incident,’ which never took place, and is being coached by Lunatic Radical Left Democrat operative attorney, Roberta Kaplan, who has sued me before, and just lost.”
“I am the only one who has been injured by this attempted EXTORTION. E. Jean Carroll. who was down on her luck and failing at life, nastily calling her African American husband ‘an Ape,’ and her Cat, ‘vagina,’ has gained money and fame she so badly wanted. It is my duty to America to right this egregious wrong, a case which was started on no fact, no dates, no nothing, just fabricated lies and political shenanigans,” he added.
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Inside the courtroom, Kaplan stated neither Trump nor Carroll could say anything to any juror unless on the stand and under oath. One of Trump’s lawyers, Michael Madaio, pushed back and claimed his client should not be gagged. Kaplan insisted there was no gag order and that the only thing he was preventing was both sides from communicating with jurors.
Picking a jury is only expected to take a few hours on Tuesday and will be followed by opening statements.