Trump Liable for Sexual Abuse

Christine, Have you ever bought something? and thought, Wow, this product actually made my life better.

Totally and usually I find those products through wirecutter.

Yeah, but you work here.

We both do. We're the hosts of the Wirecutter show from the New York Times.

It's our job to research, test and vet products and then recommend our favorites.

We'll talk to members of our team of 140 journalists to bring you the very best product recommendations in every category. That will actually make your life better.

The Wirecutter show available wherever you get podcasts.

From The New York Times I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Of course, Michael.

Can you just describe where exactly you are?

Yes, Michael. I am presently in the press room of the Federal Courthouse for the Southern District of New York in Lower Manhattan, where we just finished covering a major trial. The trial over the lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, who had sued Donald Trump, accusing him of rape.

I want to get to that case, that trial and ultimately to the verdict and what it means. But I want to start with Ben. The unexpected and in a lot of ways improbable legal journey that brought E. Jean Carroll's case to this point, tell us that story.

This case stemmed from an incident that occurred in the mid-1990s when E. Jean Carroll, a prominent.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for your trust and for this, I think it's really important.

Right, and, of course, our colleague Megan Toohey actually interviewed E. Jean Carroll about this allegation for an episode of The Daily that ran back in 2019..

That's right. Can you walk us through what happened this particular day? You had been at the studio where you and Carroll worked?

I can't remember what it was.

She went shopping after work at Bergdorf Goodman, a very, you know, luxury department store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.

He was standing outside and it was dark, so it must have been 6.

Made a gesture like held up his hand.

Yeah, held the hand like that.

And as she's leaving right through a revolving glass door, she bumps into Donald Trump.

And he came to the door and he said, You're that advice, lady, and I said, You're that real estate mogul. He said. Come advise me. I want to give you a gift. I was like, This is charming.

Oh boy.

I said, yes. I asked him who it was for, he said, a girl.

And Trump said he was there to buy a present for a girl. That was what she said and asked Carol, the advice columnist, to advise him.

And I am just having such an engaging time because I have Donald Trump in tow and he is asking for my advice. I'm like, thrilled that this is happening.

Why are you so thrilled?

Because it's Donald Trump and I've got—it's just delicious because he asked me for my advice.

It's for a girl.

And I'm in the alley, I'm just thinking, This is it?

You know, e.

And at that point, he said lingerie, or he may have said panties, he may have said underwear. But I had the impression we started to go up the escalator, we went to whatever floor the lingerie was on and we walked in.

I said, you put it on.

And then the scene really started. I'm thinking, this is terrific, this is terrific, he said. It looks like it would fit you. I said, No, it goes with your eyes.

That's what I'm thinking.

And we walk in the dressing room, I'm in front of it, I pass in front of him, he shuts the door and just pushes me against the wall. Boom.

The shoulder's leaning into you.

Yeah, holding me against the thing. And one of his hands went under in between the flaps of my coat and pulled down my tights. Not off but way down. And he ran his fingers around, looking—anyway, whatever he was doing, he was looking for my vagina, I guess, assuming that it hurt. And so it had to be with the other hand.

And what did you do next?

I may have tried to hit him with my purse. I don't know, I don't know what I did with this hand, I have no idea. The thing I clearly remember is this.

Trying to stomp his knee.

Well, I had to get my knee up to get him off, right. I got this knee up, just slightly enough to back up. I didn't say a word.

She struggles to break free and ultimately does, and flees the store, and her first instinct is to call one of her close friends. Lisa Birnbach, a journalist and author in New York. And she recounts exactly what happened. Lisa tells her Go to the police, you've been raped. She talked to another friend, Carol Martin, a day later, a news anchor in New York.

Right, I remember reading that piece, we all read that piece. Donald Trump was president at the time, and it was a bombshell excerpt from her book.

That's right. And Trump attacks her viciously. He says. It never happened, and he adds, You know, she's not my type, but e.

Good morning. I wanted to make sure we start approximately on time because people have waited long enough.

That law did pass.

I'm so proud in a matter of minutes that I will sign the Adult Survivors Act with our. It creates a one year look back window for adults.

And that one year window in which sex abuse survivors could file a lawsuit opened on Thanksgiving Day, November 24th of 2022.

So, very interestingly, e Jean Carroll can now use this law that she's personally pushed for and has now passed. To hold Donald Trump accountable for this alleged rape in a way that without this law, would not have been legally possible.

That's right.

We'll be right back.

I'm Susan Lee, I'm a researcher and fact checker with the Daily. What I do is make sure details in our episodes are accurate. I also spend a lot of time reviewing pretty much anything a guest on the show says. Let's say they're describing the color of someone's sweater.

So then tell us about this trial, this civil trial, and what the legal burdens are for. E. Jean Carroll Exactly.

MICHAEL You know, in a criminal case, the standard of proof is very high. To find somebody guilty of a crime, we all know it is called beyond a reasonable doubt.

Got it?

And as this case was filed, it also included an account of defamation. Ms Carroll said that Donald Trump had defamed her, harmed her reputation because of statements. He posted last October on his social media account TrUth Social, when he called her case a complete con job, a hoax and a lie. And he said, And while I'm not supposed to say it, I will, this woman is not my type.

So once this trial starts, what is the case that e Jean Carroll and her lawyers present?

The case begins with E. Jean Carroll herself. She's the main witness in the case, she testifies over several days, and she tells her story in graphic detail about what happened. And the rest of the trial was largely witnesses, another 10 or so called by her lawyers, who all bolster her account in some way or another.

And as we've come to understand contemporaneous accounts, you know, people who say I was told something happened at the time have become very important in trials and in cases of sexual assault.

That's absolutely right. And there's another contemporaneous report being made, whether it's to the police or to a doctor, for example. And two other witnesses who appeared testified at the trial that they were also assaulted by Donald Trump. Years ago, one, Jessica Leeds, a former stockbroker, testified that Trump had groped her and kissed her without her consent on an airplane in the 1970s.

Got it presumably because the judge felt that they might help establish a pattern.

That's right, Michael.

Are you familiar, I'm sure you are, with something that's often referred to as the Access Hollywood tape?

Yes, I am. And Carroll's lawyers asked him in their deposition, in that video deposition, about his claim. That as a celebrity, as a star, as he put it, he was able to grab women by the genitals. You could do anything, that's what you said, correct? Well, historically, that's true with stars.

So, in a sense, by the time e.

That's right.

So then what about the defense?

So Trump's lawyers presented no witnesses on his behalf, none, and, of course, Donald Trump himself, who could have been a witness, did not come to the court. He did not attend the trial and he did not testify on his own behalf.

Do you understand why that was their strategy?

Well, it's still unclear to me if the defense really wanted Donald Trump to testify. You know, I'm not sure. Given his position, his total denial that this happened, how much more, he would have added. Trump was not acknowledging he'd even seen E..J. Carroll or been with her that night at the store.

So Trump's lawyer, and it's not clear that it's hugely successful, is trying to portray e. Jean Carroll as an untrustworthy teller of this story.

That's right. And Trump's lawyer also made it very clear that, in his view, this lawsuit was a scam and that Ms. Carroll had brought it for status and political reasons. And he argued that she was doing just fine, you know, she had gotten a lot of publicity for her book and had gotten more well-known.

I'm curious what you were thinking, Ben, as this case comes to a close and gets handed to the jury.

You always think when you're watching a case, you know how will the jury react. And what made this such a mystery is that, for some very specific reasons, and unlike most trials, Michael, this jury was completely anonymous. Usually, we can find out the names of jurors and something about them when they're being interviewed in the pretrial jury selection process. But the judge here expressed concern that if the jurors identities were known, they could possibly be subject to harassment. Or worse, by supporters of Mr. Trump or by anybody who was unhappy with the decision?

So, Ben, that brings us to Tuesday morning. The jury has the case. I had expected them to need a lot of time, they didn't, they needed just a few hours.

That's right. In less than three hours, they came back with a verdict. There were no notes, no questions, no one was asking for testimony to be read back. The jury came back very quickly for any case, but certainly for this kind of case with a verdict. Mm-hmm.

And just walk us through that verdict, because it's a little bit complicated.

So when the jury took the case, they had a lot of questions before them. But in essence, it asked Did Ms Carroll prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, which is to say, more likely than not, that Mr. Trump had raped Ms Carroll as she accused him? Or something less?

Got it?

The jury also went through a series of questions on the defamation claim that she had filed and ultimately found that he had defamed her. And eventually, when you add it all up, awarded her $5 million in damages to compensate her for both the impact of the sexual abuse, as well as the harm to her reputation. That was done by the defamatory statements on Truth Social.

But how did you interpret that ultimate verdict? How do you make sense of it?

MICHAEL Of course, we don't know for sure. We can't talk to the jurors, as I said they were anonymous. But even though the jury did not find that Trump raped Ms. Carroll and instead found that he sexually abused her overwhelmingly, I think this is a verdict against him.

Ben, it strikes me that you have now covered several of the most important cases stemming from the MeToo movement. The case of Jeffrey Epstein, the alleged serial abuser of young women, and the trial of his longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. And now Trump? And when we think about the meaning of the MeToo movement, it ultimately is holding powerful people, mostly men, accountable for how they treat women. And it's hard to think of anyone more powerful than the former president of the United States.

That's right, and you know, there's been a lot achieved in recent years, and certainly the MeToo movement has made its force felt in a very important way. But this is a first. This is a former president of the United States who had been accused by multiple women over the years of sexual misconduct.

Well, Ben, thank you very much, we appreciate it.

Thank you Michael for having me.

On Tuesday night, Trump said that he planned to appeal the jury's verdict. Meanwhile, one of the New York legislators who wrote the law that allowed E. Jean Carroll to sue Trump, State Senator Brad Hoylman, said that the verdict demonstrated why the law was needed, Hoylman said. Quote There should be no limit on survivors bringing their abusers to justice.

Everybody in this meeting reiterated the positions they were at. I didn't see any new movement, President said. The staff should get back together.

Both sides stuck to their original bargaining positions, with Biden demanding that Congress raise the debt ceiling unconditionally, and McCarthy insisting that such a move be accompanied by big spending cuts. Speaking to reporters afterward, McCarthy expressed frustration with the president.

Well, I asked him numerous times, are there some places we could find savings? He wouldn't give me any, so I'm hopeful that we'll be able to find them.

And after a nearly three month medical absence from the Senate that threatened to derail Democrats agenda, Dianne Feinstein returned to Washington on Tuesday night. Her return will restore a Democratic majority to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Democrats need her vote to confirm federal judges and conduct investigations into the ethics of Supreme Court justices. Feinstein had asked to be replaced on the committee by a fellow Democrat, but Republicans blocked the move, making her return increasingly urgent.