E. Jean Carroll leaves a Manhattan courthouse in May 2023 after a jury found Donald Trump liable of sexual abuse in an earlier civil case.Photo:Spencer Platt/Getty
Spencer Platt/Getty
E. Jean Carrollsays she’ll use the millions in damages she is expected to receive fromDonald Trumpto “do something good.”
On FridayTrump was ordered to pay $83.3 millionfor making defamatory statements about the writer, after an anonymous federal jury made up of seven men and two women deliberated about how much the former president should give Carroll as punishment for disparaging her in 2019 and denying that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
Trump, 77, had already beendeemed liable for sexual abuse and defamationin a separate civil trial last spring and ordered to pay the formerEllecolumnist $5 million in damages.
In a Saturday interview withThe New York Times, Carroll, 80, said, “We’re going to do something good with it," when asked how she planned to spend the damages.
Speaking toCBS News, Carroll acknowledged that the sum she was awarded last Friday was extraordinary — and perhaps intended to send the former president a message. “I think [the jury] said, ‘Enough,'” she said onCBS Mornings.“Who can conceive of $83 million?”
“It’s inspiring, this amount of money,” she continued. “We can do really a lot of good with this money.”
Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll (right) leaves federal court with her lawyer Roberta Kaplan in April 2023.AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
Trump’s legal team has already indicated it plans to appeal the latest verdict and it could be years until Carroll gets paid. When she does, she toldBBCshe also plans to spend it on “something Donald Trump hates.”
Speaking to theTimes, Carroll said the win for her was a victim for women everywhere. “This win, more than any other thing, when we needed it the most — after we lost the rights over our own bodies in many states — we put out our flag in the ground on this one. Women won this one. I think it bodes well for the future.”
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Elsewhere in her conversation with theTimes, Carroll also said the legal victory indicated that the former president was something of an emperor with no clothes — someone who, when stripped of power, is just a man.
“When you’ve actually faced the man, he’s just a man with no clothes on,” she told theTimes. “It’s the people around him that are giving him the power.”
Former President Donald Trump on Jan. 11, 2024.Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty
Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty
Prior to winning the most recent defamation trial, Carroll successfully went up against Trump on sexual abuse and defamation allegations.
In that earlier suit, the writer alleged: “Roughly 27 years ago, playful banter at the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue in New York City took a dark turn when Defendant Donald J. Trump seized Plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, forced her up against a dressing room wall, pinned her in place with his shoulder, and raped her.”
The complaint further alleged that the incident “severely injured Carroll, causing significant pain and suffering, lasting psychological harms, loss of dignity, and invasion of her privacy” and sought “redress for her injuries and to demonstrate that even a man as powerful as Trump can be held accountable under the law.”
source: people.com
