E. Jean Carroll | |
---|---|
Born | Elizabeth Jean Carroll December 12, 1943 |
Education | Indiana University, Bloomington (BA) |
Occupation(s) | Journalist, advice columnist |
Employer(s) | Elle, 1993–2020 |
Spouses |
Elizabeth Jean Carroll (born December 12, 1943) is an American journalist, author, and advice columnist. Her "Ask E. Jean" column appeared in Elle magazine from 1993 through 2019, becoming one of the longest-running advice columns in American publishing. [1] In her 2019 book, What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal, Carroll accused CBS CEO Les Moonves and Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in the mid-1990s. Both Moonves and Trump denied the allegations. [2] [3] [4]
Carroll sued Trump for defamation and battery in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (originally filed in the New York Supreme Court). On May 9, 2023, a jury found Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse against Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. [5] On July 19, 2023, Judge Kaplan found that Trump did rape her as the term is understood "in common modern parlance", [6] although not “in the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law”. [7] On January 26, 2024, a jury found Trump liable for defamation against Carroll regarding his remarks after the first verdict, and awarded her an additional $83.3 million in damages. [8] [9] Trump appealed the verdict and posted a $91.6 million bond. [10]
Elizabeth Jean Carroll was born on December 12, 1943, [11] [12] in Detroit, Michigan. [13] Her father, Thomas F. Carroll Jr., was a furniture store manager, and her mother, Betty (née McKinney) Carroll, was a Republican politician in Allen County, Indiana. [14] [15] The oldest of four children, Carroll was raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with two sisters and a brother; as a child, she was called "Betty Jean", "Jeannie" and "Betty". [16] She attended Indiana University. A Pi Beta Phi and a cheerleader, she was crowned Miss Indiana University in 1963, and in 1964, as a representative of the university, she won the Miss Cheerleader USA title. [17] She appeared on To Tell the Truth in 1964. [18] [19]
Carroll's "Ask E. Jean" column appeared in Elle from 1993 until 2020. Widely read, it was acclaimed for Carroll's opinions on sex, her insistence that women should "never never" structure their lives around men, and her compassion for letter-writers experiencing difficult life situations. [20] [21] When it debuted, Amy Gross, a former editor-in-chief of Elle, compared the column to putting Carroll on a "bucking bronco", describing her responses to readers as "the cheers and whoops and hollers of a fearless woman having a good ol' time." [22] Carroll's writing style often incorporates humor. [23] [13] [24]
Carroll was fired from Elle in February 2020. She wrote on Twitter that she was dismissed "because Trump ridiculed my reputation, laughed at my looks, & dragged me through the mud". [25] Elle maintained that the decision to fire Carroll was a business decision unrelated to Trump. [24]
Carroll wrote for Saturday Night Live 's twelfth season in 1986 and 1987. [13] She was nominated for an Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series at the 39th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1987. The Television Academy entry for her nomination mistakenly lists her name as "Jean E. Carroll". [26]
From 1994 through 1996, Carroll was the host and producer of the Ask E. Jean television series that aired on NBC's America's Talking—the predecessor to MSNBC. [27] [13] Entertainment Weekly called Carroll "the most entertaining cable talk show host you will never see." [28] Carroll and the show were nominated for a CableACE Award in 1995. [29]
In addition to writing for magazines including The Atlantic and Vanity Fair , Carroll served as a contributing editor for Outside , [30] [13] [31] Esquire, [32] [33] [34] New York, [35] and Playboy. She was Playboy's first female contributing editor. [13] [36]
Carroll was known for her gonzo-style first-person narratives. [37] [13] She hiked into the Star Mountains with an Atbalmin tracker and a Telefomin warrior, [38] chronicled the lives of basketball groupies in a story called "Love in the Time of Magic"; [33] and went to Indiana to investigate why four white farm kids were thrown out of school for dressing like black artists in "The Return of the White Negro". [34] She moved in with her old boyfriends and their wives; [32] and went on a camping trip with Fran Lebowitz. [37] [39] Bill Tonelli, her Esquire and Rolling Stone editor, said in a 1999 interview that all of Carroll's stories were "pretty much the same thing. Which is: 'What is this person like when he or she is in a room with E. Jean?' She's institutionally incapable of being uninteresting." [40]
Carroll's work has been included in non-fiction anthologies such as The Best of Outside: The First 20 Years (Vintage Books, 1998), Out of the Noosphere: Adventure, Sports, Travel, and the Environment (Fireside, 1998) and Sand in My Bra: Funny Women Write from the Road (Traveler's Tales, 2003). [30] Her 2002 story for Spin, "The Cheerleaders" was selected as one of the year's "Best True Crime Reporting" pieces. It appeared in Best American Crime Writing, edited by Otto Penzler, Thomas H. Cook, and Nicholas Pileggi (Pantheon Books, 2002). [41] [42]
In 1993, Carroll's biography of Hunter S. Thompson, Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson, was published by Dutton. Her memoir, What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal was released in June 2019. The title refers to the 1729 satire A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. [43] In 2019, The New York Times referred to Carroll as "feminism's answer to Hunter S. Thompson." [37]
In 2020 and 2021, for The Atlantic, Carroll wrote a series of articles that profiled several of the 25 women that have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] Her profile of Jill Harth, who alleged that she had been groped by Trump, appeared in Vanity Fair in January 2021. [49] In October 2021 This American Life featured Carroll in conversation with Jessica Leeds, who also accused Trump of sexual misconduct. [50]
In 2002, Carroll co-founded greatboyfriends.com with her sister, Cande Carroll. On the site, women recommended single men to each other. [51] In 2005, GreatBoyfriends was acquired by The Knot Inc.. In 2004, she launched Catch27.com, a spoof of Facebook. On the site, people put their profiles on trading cards and bought, sold, and traded each other. [52] She launched an online version of her column, askejean.com, in 2007. In 2012 Carroll co-founded Tawkify, "a personal concierge for dating." She also advised Tawkify's matchmaking team. [1]
This section may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience.(January 2024) |
On June 21, 2019, Carroll published an article in New York magazine which stated that Donald Trump had sexually assaulted her in late 1995 or early 1996, in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City. She provided further details in her book What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal. [2] [19] [53] Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin told New York magazine that Carroll had confided in them shortly after the incident. [19] [2] [54] Trump denied the allegations and claimed that he had never met Carroll; [55] however, a photograph of her socializing with Trump in 1987 was published in the article. [19] [56] Trump dismissed the photograph's significance. [55]
Carroll said that on her way out of the Bergdorf Goodman department store, she ran into Trump, and he asked for help buying a gift for a woman. After suggesting a handbag or a hat, the two reportedly moved on to the lingerie section, and joked about the other trying some on. Carroll said they ended up in a dressing room together, the door of which was shut, and Trump forcefully kissed her, pulled down her tights, and raped her with his penis before she was able to escape. She stated that the incident lasted less than three minutes. [55] [57] Carroll initially chose not to refer to the alleged sexual assault as rape, instead describing it as a fight: "My word is fight. My word is not the victim word ... I fought." [58] [59] [60] The jury in the later civil trial determined that Trump had forcibly penetrated Carroll with his fingers but not with his penis as she alleged, [6] [61] and Judge Lewis A. Kaplan later ruled that Carroll's accusation of rape against Trump was therefore "substantially true". [62]
In November 2019, Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit with the New York Supreme Court. The suit stated that Trump had damaged her reputation, substantially harmed her professionally, and caused emotional pain. Carroll stated "Decades ago, the now President of the United States raped me. When I had the courage to speak out about the attack, he defamed my character, accused me of lying for personal gain, even insulted my appearance." She stated that she was "filing this (lawsuit) on behalf of every woman who has ever been harassed, assaulted, silenced, or spoken up only to be shamed, fired, ridiculed and belittled". White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham described the suit as "frivolous" and claimed Carroll's story was fraudulent. [63]
In September 2020, government lawyers from the Department of Justice (DOJ) asserted that Trump had acted in his official capacity while responding to Carroll's accusation; they asserted that the Federal Tort Claims Act [a] grants their department the right to take the case from Trump's private lawyers and move it to federal court. [64] This would have ended the lawsuit, as the government cannot be sued for defamation. [65] Carroll's lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, stated that "Trump's effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is without precedent." [64] In October 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan rejected the DOJ's motion, arguing that the president is not a government employee and that Trump's comments were not related to his job. [66] The following month, the DOJ filed an appeal with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. [66]
In June 2021, the DOJ argued to the Second Circuit appeals court that DOJ lawyers should defend Trump as a federal employee. [67] On September 27, 2022, the appeals court ruled that "we cannot say what the District would do" in terms of allowing Trump to be shielded by his former office as U.S. president. [68] On October 19, Trump was deposed as a witness in the case. [65] In January 2023, the District of Columbia (D.C.) appeals court held oral arguments before a full panel of judges. [69] Trump's lawyers argued that his comments fell within the scope of his employment, while some judges pointed out that D.C. law holds employers responsible when their employees cause individuals harm in the scope of their employment, but not otherwise.[ clarification needed ] [70] [71]
On November 24, 2022, Carroll sued Trump for battery in New York under the Adult Survivors Act, a law passed the previous May that briefly allowed sexual assault victims to file civil suits regardless of expired statutes of limitations. [72] Carroll made a renewed claim of defamation, citing statements Trump made in October. [73] [74] In February 2023, Judge Kaplan scheduled the trial date for April 25. [57] [75] On April 13, 2023, Carroll disclosed that part of her legal expenses were funded by Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, venture capitalist, and donor to the Democratic Party. [76]
On May 9, 2023, a jury of six men and three women found Trump liable for sexual abuse, battery and defamation. On the issue of rape, the jury found it was not proven that Trump had raped her as specified in New York law, which specifies rape as the nonconsensual and forcible penetration with one's penis. The jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse in that he nonconsensually digitally penetrated her. [6] [61] Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages. CBS News stated, "They found Trump liable for sexual abuse, not sexual assault." [5] Following the verdict, during a Town Hall on CNN, Trump repeated that Carroll's narrative was a "fake", "made up story", invented by a "whack job". [77] He filed an appeal with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on May 11, 2023. [78]
On May 23, 2023, seeking $10 million in additional damages, Carroll asked the court to expand the 2019 defamation lawsuit to include Trump's post-verdict remarks on CNN and Truth Social. [79] The court granted the motion, and the second defamation trial was scheduled for January 15, 2024. [80] In June 2023, Trump counter-sued Carroll for defamation, after she told CNN "yes he did" rape her, in response to a question about the jury not finding him liable for that offense. Judge Kaplan dismissed the lawsuit in August, ruling that Carroll's rape claim against Trump was substantially true. [81] In September 2023, Judge Kaplan issued a summary judgment in Carroll's favor, stating that the facts established by the trial jury were indisputable. [82] On January 16, 2024, after Joe Tacopina dropped his representation of Trump just as the case was about to resume, ex-Trump attorney Tim Parlatore said that he thought Tacopina had, in prior proceedings, "barely cross-examined Jean Carroll". [83]
On January 26, 2024, a jury found Trump liable for $18.3 million in compensation for emotional and reputational harm, and $65 million in punitive damages, totaling $83.3 million. [84] After Judge Kaplan denied a request by Trump's team to delay the payment to the plaintiff, Trump, on March 8, 2024, three days before the payments deadline, appealed the verdict and posted a $91.6 million bond. Carroll stated that the bond size is "stupendous", and suggested that had the appeal not been submitted, she would have "quickly" begun seizing Trump’s assets. [10]
In a July 19, 2023, memorandum opinion, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial, demonstrated Trump "raped" Carroll in the plain sense of the word. [7] He clarified that despite the "far narrower definition" of rape under New York's statute, as the term is understood "in common modern parlance", and, citing definitions from the US Justice Department and the American Psychological Association, "the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that":
"The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was 'raped' within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump 'raped' her as many people commonly understand the word 'rape,'" Kaplan wrote.
He added: "Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that."
Kaplan said New York's legal definition of "rape" is "far narrower" than the word is understood in "common modern parlance."
The former requires forcible, unconsented-to penetration with one's penis. But he said that the conduct the jury effectively found Trump liable for — forced digital penetration — meets a more common definition of rape. He cited definitions offered by the American Psychological Association and the Justice Department, which in 2012 expanded its definition of rape to include penetration "with any body part or object." [6]
Carroll was one of 13 women who in 2019 accused CBS Corporation chairman and CEO Les Moonves of sexual assault. She says the incident occurred in the late 1990s in a hotel elevator after interviewing Moonves for a story; he denied the allegation. [2]
Carroll lived in Montana with her first husband Stephen Byers before moving to New York City to pursue a career as a journalist. [85] She and Byers divorced in 1984. [86] Her second marriage was to John Johnson, [19] an anchorman and artist. Carroll and Johnson divorced in 1990. [27] Carroll lived in upstate New York as of April 2023 [update] . [16]
The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case concerning the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a woman who was running in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989. Crime in New York City was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged. On the night Meili was attacked, dozens of teenagers had entered the park, and there were reports of muggings and physical assaults.
Miranda Devine is an Australian-American columnist and writer, now based in New York City. She hosted The Miranda Devine Show on Sydney radio station 2GB until it ended in 2015. She has written columns for Fairfax Media newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald, and for News Limited newspapers Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Melbourne's Sunday Herald Sun, and Perth's Sunday Times. As of 2022, she writes for the New York Post. Some of her political opinion pieces and statements on race, gender, and the environment have been the subject of public scrutiny and debate.
Bergdorf Goodman Inc. is an American luxury department store based in New York City, founded in 1899 by Herman Bergdorf. As of 2024, it operates a women's store and a men's store across the street from each other on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Since 2024 it has been owned by Saks Global, the American division of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Lewis Avins Kaplan is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. He was the presiding judge in a number of cases involving high-profile defendants, including E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump, Virginia Giuffre v. Prince Andrew,United States v. Bankman-Fried, and trials of Al Qaeda terrorists such as Ahmed Ghailani.
Roberta Ann Kaplan, also known as Robbie Kaplan, is an American lawyer focusing on commercial litigation and public interest matters. Kaplan successfully argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of LGBT rights activist Edith Windsor, in United States v. Windsor, a landmark decision that invalidated a section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages. She was a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison before starting her own firm in 2017. In 2018, she co-founded the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund.
In 2014, multiple allegations emerged that Bill Cosby, an American media personality, had sexually assaulted dozens of women throughout his career. Cosby was well known in the United States for his eccentric image, and gained a reputation as "America's Dad" for his portrayal of Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show (1984–1992). He received numerous awards and honorary degrees throughout his career, many of which have since been revoked. There had been previous allegations against Cosby, but they were dismissed and accusers were ignored or disbelieved.
Joseph Tacopina is an American lawyer, media personality, and professional sports executive. He has served as a personal attorney for former U.S. president Donald Trump, representing him in a New York criminal case involving payments made to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, and in a civil case in which Trump was not found liable for the rape claim but was liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll.
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On October 7, 2016, one month before the United States presidential election, The Washington Post published a video and article about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and television host Billy Bush having a lewd conversation about women in September 2005. Trump and Bush were on a bus on their way to film an episode of Access Hollywood, a show owned by NBCUniversal. In the video, Trump described his attempt to seduce a married woman and indicated he might start kissing a woman that he and Bush were about to meet. He added, "I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything." Many commentators and lawyers described such an action as sexual assault. Others argued that the remarks were an assertion that sexual consent is easier to obtain for the famous and wealthy.
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In October 2017, The New York Times and The New Yorker reported that dozens of women had accused the American film producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse over a period of at least 30 years. Over 80 women in the film industry eventually accused Weinstein of such acts. Weinstein himself denied "any non-consensual sex". Shortly after, he was dismissed from The Weinstein Company (TWC), expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and other professional associations, and retired from public view.
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E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump is the name of two related lawsuits by author E. Jean Carroll against Donald Trump, who served as the 45th president of the United States and is the current president-elect of the United States. The two suits resulted in a total of $88.3 million in damages awarded to Carroll; both cases are under appeal. Both cases were related to Carroll's accusation from mid-2019 that he sexually assaulted her in late 1995 or early 1996. Trump denied the allegations, prompting Carroll to sue him for defamation in November 2019.
The Adult Survivors Act (ASA) is New York State legislation enacted in May 2022 which amended state law to allow alleged victims of sexual offenses for which the statute of limitations had lapsed to file civil suits for a one-year period, from November 24, 2022, to November 24, 2023. The act thus expanded the ability of plaintiffs to sue for sexual assault and unwanted sexual contact in the workplace.
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Forcible touching, under New York State law, is a sex offense. A person found guilty of it may be sentenced to up to one year in prison, up to three years probation, may be required to register as a sex offender, and may be ordered to comply with orders of protection.
Footnotes
Citations
The writer was born Betty Jean Carroll on December 12, 1943 in Detroit, Michigan, to Tom and Betty (McKinney) Carroll.
Donald Trump assaulted me in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room 23 years ago. But he's not alone on the list of awful men in my life.
Every woman gets to choose her word. Every woman gets to choose how she describes it. This is my way of saying it. This is my word. My word is fight. My word is not the victim word. I am not—I have not been raped. Something has not been done to me. I fought. That's the thing.
Reid Hoffman, the billionaire behind LinkedIn who's now a megadonor to Democrats, has been quietly bankrolling E. Jean Carroll's rape case against former President Donald Trump, according to court records filed Thursday.
Indeed, the jury's verdict in Carroll II establishes, as against Mr Trump, the fact that Mr Trump 'raped her', albeit digitally rather than with his penis. Thus, it establishes against him the substantial truth of Ms Carroll's 'rape' accusations.