E. JEAN CARROLL VS DONALD TRUMP – The Feud and legal battles
E. JEAN CARROLL
In her biography titled What Do We Need Men For? : A Modest Proposal, former Elle Magazine advice writer E. Jean Carroll made the accusation that former President Donald Trump had sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman department store somewhere between the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996. An extract from her memoir was featured in the June 2019 issue of The Cut, which is published by New York Magazine.
Carroll filed her first defamation case against Trump in 2019. The action referred to three allegedly defamatory statements that Trump made after the release of her excerpt. In the statement, he claimed that he did not know Carroll and that she was not his “type.” A decision about Trump’s liability in this case was handed down by United States District Judge Lewis Kaplan on September 6, 2023. Carroll was awarded $83.3 million by the jury on January 26, 2024. This is a timeline of their court cases, which can be found below.
What Did Carroll Assert?
Carroll alleged that an incident took place at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan at some point between the years 1995 and 1996. During that time period, Carroll was a well-known columnist for magazines and a talk show host on television.
Carroll’s complaint stated that the two had a fortuitous encounter at the store, where Trump was buying for a present for a young lady. She asserted that he pushed her into a dressing room and sexually assaulted her after he had asked her for her opinion and the two of them had gone shopping together.
Carroll claimed that after the incident, she informed two friends about it, but in the end, she did not go to the police. (Since then, both women have agreed with her narrative.) She also claimed that she kept the story on hold for twenty years because she was concerned that making the allegation public would be detrimental to both her reputation and her career, while the repercussions for Trump would be negligible.
However, she stated that her perspective shifted in 2016 and 2017, when Donald Trump was elected president and allegations against Harvey Weinstein, a movie producer, became well known to the public. It was at this point that the barriers that she had constructed in her head began to fall down. These walls included the worry that Trump would emerge unharmed, the reluctance to enable him and his allies to come after her, the uncertainty that speaking up would truly matter, and the persistent anxiety that she was somehow to blame for being raped.
At the end of the day, her claim was published in 2019 by New York Magazine as a portion of her memoir titled What Do We Need Men For? A Suggested Proposal. Shortly after that, the book was released to the public.
Ten significant instances that occurred during the legal battle:
Before the alleged assault took place, Carroll had already began writing her Ask E. Jean a few years previously. In the month of June 2019, Carroll came forward with allegations, but Trump swiftly refuted them in a written statement that the White House began disseminating a few hours later. During that period, he noted that he had never in his life had the opportunity to meet Carroll. He asserted that she was attempting to promote a new book that ought to be a reflection of her motivation and ought to be sold in the fiction department.
The following day, as Trump was making his way outside to board Marine One, a reporter approached him on the South Lawn of the White House and inquired about Carroll’s allegations. In spite of the fact that the former president stated in his written declaration that he had never met Carroll, the reporter pointed up a photograph that showed the two of them together in the 1980s.
- On November 4, 2019, Carroll filed a lawsuit against Trump for defamation
The advice columnist was unable to seek damages for the alleged assault itself because the statute of limitations had already expired. Instead, the advice columnist filed defamation claims against the former president for his written statement and comments made on South Lawn. The first complaint also mentioned Trump’s interview with “The Hill” after Carroll came forward. In the interview, Trump stated that she was not his type and disputed her account once more. However, the interview has subsequently been removed from the case as part of the investigation.
- In September 2020, the Department of Justice will intervene
On September 8, 2020, the Justice Department, which was under Trump’s administration at the time, formally became engaged, providing Trump with a potential exit strategy. As a means of certifying that Trump made the words in question within the scope of his employment as president, they attempted to step in and substitute themselves as the defendant in accordance with the Westfall Act. A few weeks later, the endeavor was turned down by United States District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who had been appointed by previous President Clinton. The legal battle immediately became a shambles, and it would go on to stall the case for a number of years as the Justice Department under the administration of Biden continued to fight on appeal.
- During November 2022, Carroll files a second lawsuit against Trump
New York became one of several states to implement legislation in response to the #MeToo movement, which revived claims that had been time-barred and sought civil damages for sexual misconduct. This occurred while Carroll’s first lawsuit was still in the process of being resolved. On the same day that the Adult Survivors Act of New York entered into force on November 24, 2022, providing plaintiffs a one-year lookback window to make their claims, Carroll filed another lawsuit against Trump. This time, she filed a claim for damages for the alleged assault itself.
In addition, the author included a fresh lawsuit of defamation after Trump’s denial of her claims in October of 2022. Notably, the allegations did not contain any alleged behavior that occurred while he was in office, which allowed the case to proceed toward trial without the Westfall Act issue becoming a factor.
- In July 2023, as a result of the Department of Justice’s decision to withdraw from the lawsuit, a multi-year and intricate legal battle comes to a close
As a result of the escalation, which Carroll’s attorneys later referred to as a “tit-for-tat,” Carroll’s initial legal action started to move forward. The attempted involvement of the Justice Department had been winding its way through the courts for close to three years, including a group of federal judges in New York and the full bench of the highest local court in the District of Columbia. It came to a conclusion without a definitive decision, and on July 11, 2023, the Justice Department reversed its position and withdrew from the lawsuit, placing Trump in a position of responsibility.
- In May of 2023, the jury decides that Trump is responsible for sexual battery
Following the failure of Trump’s several attempts to dismiss Carroll’s second lawsuit, the case was scheduled to go to trial. In a decision that was handed down on May 9, 2023, a federal jury in New York found that Trump was responsible for sexual abuse. In addition, Carroll was awarded a total of five million dollars in damages for her defamation action against Trump. The intensity of their conflict quickly increased. Trump made an appearance at a pre-scheduled CNN town hall the day after the decision was handed down, and he once again refuted Carroll’s account.
Subsequently, she proceeded to incorporate those remarks into her initial defamation claim, which had not yet been brought to trial. After that, the former president filed a countersuit against Carroll for defamation, citing an appearance that Carroll had made on CNN just a few hours before Trump’s town hall meeting. According to the definitions of rape in New York, Carroll had suggested that he had raped her, despite the fact that the jury had determined that he was only guilty for sexual abuse and not rape.
In the end, the judge, Kaplan, dismissed Trump’s lawsuit, stating that it was little more than a legal technicality that did not make any difference when the typical person characterized rape.
- In September of 2023, Trump was ruled to be automatically responsible in the first case/defamation complaint
On September 8, 2023, Kaplan made the decision that Trump was accountable for defaming Carroll because, according to the verdict of the previous jury, his denials were automatically false and defamatory. Carroll was awarded a partial victory as a result of this, however the issue of damages would still be decided by a jury.
- In January of 2024, the Trial in Carroll’s original defamation suit
In June of 2019, when Carroll first came forward with her testimony, a second jury decided that Trump had defamed her and ordered him to pay her $83.3 million. This decision was made on January 26, 2024. In contrast to the previous trial, Trump was present for a significant portion of the proceedings and even took the stand in his own defense. He turned the trial into a campaign stop, traveling back and forth between the federal court in Manhattan and the state of New Hampshire. On multiple occasions, Trump stated in the courtroom the day before the verdict that the situation in question did not represent the United States of America.
- In December of 2023, the appeals court rejects Trump’s attempt to declare immunity
In order to avoid going to trial in the remaining case, Trump had made an effort to assert immunity in the case on his own without the assistance of the Justice Department. This was one of his final strategies. Despite the fact that Kaplan found that Trump had delayed too long to attempt to assert immunity, an appeals court agreed to hear Trump’s appeal on an expedited issue prior to the upcoming trial that was due to take place. Kaplan’s decision was upheld by the 2nd United States Circuit Court of Appeals on December 13, 2023, which paved the way for the trial to take place.
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