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    As the Epstein case shows, Trump’s Maga faithful care about only one kind of sex-crime victim | Emma Brockes

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    On Monday, Donald Trump appeared in two, unrelated stories involving the sexual abuse of women. The first was a ruling by the US federal court of appeals, upholding an earlier judgment in which the president was found liable for $83.3m in damages for defaming the writer E Jean Carroll – a woman whom, it was ruled in civil court in 2023, had been sexually abused by Trump. On the same day, Trump’s alleged contribution to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s “birthday book” was shared by Democrats on social media in the form of a lewd drawing the president denied having made. The E Jean Carroll news caused no public inconvenience for Trump; the Epstein story went up like a mushroom cloud in what has become the most politically dangerous episode of his presidency.What, exactly, is the difference then between the sexual abuse of E Jean Carroll, for which Trump has been found liable in a civil court, and the trafficking and abuse of victims by Epstein, in which there is no direct evidence of Trump’s involvement? For that matter, why does Trump’s record of gross references to grabbing women “by the pussy” and calling them “fat” and “ugly” elicit barely a shrug from supporters, while his friendship with Epstein, a man referred to in the press, variously, as the “billionaire paedophile”, the “paeodophile financier”, and, surely coming down the pike at some point, the “hell-based paedophile money manager”, has triggered not only fury among the Maga faithful but accusations of a Trump cover-up?Trump people would argue it’s a question of degree: Epstein occupies the worst and most taboo category of sex offender – a child abuser, in which no grey area exists. This assumes the existence, within Maga circles, of a continuum ranging from paedophile sex trafficking (very bad), through other categories of sex offending (less bad but still quite bad), to “date rape” and the whole of #MeToo (lot of fuss about nothing). But this isn’t how Trump supporters have calibrated their outrage. Instead, what we have seen is mass, Maga hysteria over Epstein, in which even the likes of Tucker Carlson have made veiled accusations against Trump, and complete indifference to every other accusation made by women against the president.It is a feature of misogyny, of course, that the flipside of abusing women and curtailing their rights is selective sentimentalisation. Animating the Maga movement is the desire for a return to traditional gender roles and pronatalism, a force driven, one assumes, by a sense of frustrated male entitlement that has built up over decades of gains made by the women’s movement. A hatred of women as extreme as the one seen within the current Republican movement requires a moral counterweight. And what better source of moral clarity – what starker moral issue, one that brooks no dissent or equivocation from anyone on either side – than the defence of abused girls? In the rightwing media, the only stories relished as much as those about Epstein’s crimes, are ones about violent offences committed by immigrants.As a result, the use to which “child abuse” is put within the rightwing ecosystem is not only as a bat signal for conspiracy theories, designed to increase the reach of each story, but as a pretext for everyone in that world to feel, perhaps fleetingly, very good about themselves, moral crusaders in a horrible world. In the case of Epstein, there’s the bonus of liberal names being ensnared in the net. In Epstein’s “birthday book”, Bill Clinton appears to have left a whimsical message referring to Epstein’s “childlike curiosity”, and “drive to make a difference”. And Peter Mandelson appears in a bathrobe to address Epstein as “my best pal”. (Sidenote: there can be few situations in which being gay in public life is an advantage over being straight – but downplaying one’s involvement with Epstein is definitely one of them.)The curious thing about all this is that, per the biases that govern how victims of sexual abuse are perceived, E Jean Carroll is a pretty good victim: an older woman (she was 52 when Trump abused her in 1996), doing a mundane chore (shopping), in a public place (Bergdorf Goodman). And yet the judgment of the civil courts in her favour in 2023 elicited no sympathy among Trump supporters, in or outside Congress, and since then the president has suffered no apparent drop in political fortunes.But here’s the rub: Carroll is an adult woman, liberal, successful, stylish, and articulate – everything that threatens and triggers Trump’s base. The only female victim worth defending in Trumpland is the fallen girl, a figure straight out of a Victorian lithograph, and one who inspires such fervour, such delusions of nobility, that if it comes to a straight contest, she may win out over Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

    Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump’s White House is filling with alleged sexual abusers … led by him

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      Donald Trump was found civilly liable last year for the defamation and sexual abuse of the writer E Jean Carroll – just one of the more than 27 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. In January 2025, he will again be president of the United States – the first to take office with a court-adjudicated history of sex crimes.And it seems he’s eager to pack the White House with people just like him.Four of president-elect Trump’s cabinet-level nominees have faced serious allegations of sexual misconduct, ranging from workplace sexual harassment to assault, and a fifth is embroiled in a sexual abuse-related lawsuit.As Americans brace themselves for Trump 2.0, it’s time to be clear-eyed about the Maga machine: a history of alleged sexual criminality isn’t a bug, it’s a central part of the hardware; an organizing principle that clarifies how Trump and those like him view their power and how they intend to wield it.Trump’s first choice for attorney general, the former representative Matt Gaetz, was concurrently under investigation by the Department of Justice and the House ethics committee for allegedly violating federal sex-trafficking laws and statutory rape. The disgraced representative also reportedly bragged about his sexual conquests and showed nude photos of women to his fellow lawmakers. On Thursday afternoon, Gaetz announced he would be withdrawing his name from consideration to avoid being a “distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition”, just hours before CNN published a report about a second alleged sexual encounter between Gaetz and a 17-year-old. (The age of consent in Florida is 18.)Gaetz’s withdrawal provided a brief moment of relief. But, still, Trump’s would-be cabinet is filled with alleged criminals, all of whom the president-elect has vociferously defended, and all of whom deny wrongdoing.Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped for the made-up position of “efficiency czar”, reportedly exposed his penis to a SpaceX flight attendant in 2016 and offered to buy her a horse in exchange for sex. Musk’s company SpaceX paid her $250,000 in 2018 to settle the sexual misconduct claim. He was also sued this year by eight former SpaceX employees, who alleged that the CEO treated “women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter”.Then there’s the nominee for secretary of defense, the Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who was accused of sexually assaulting a staff member of the California Federation of Republican Women in 2017.In the police report that was filed at the time, and which was obtained by the New York Times, the unnamed woman told law enforcement that Hegseth had taken her phone and blocked her exit from his hotel room before assaulting her. Though Hegseth was never charged with a crime, he did enter into a nondisclosure agreement with the woman, which included a financial settlement.Robert F Kennedy Jr was accused of sexually assaulting Eliza Cooney, a former family babysitter, in the late 90s. Trump now wants him to run the Department of Health and Human Services.Finally, Trump’s pick for secretary of education, Linda McMahon, was recently named in a lawsuit alleging that she and her husband, Vince McMahon, failed to stop an employee from sexually abusing children in the 1980s and 90s, when the McMahons were running World Wrestling Entertainment. (An attorney for McMahon told CNN that the lawsuit is “filled with scurrilous lies.”)These picks feel comically brazen, like shots fired directly at the #MeToo movement, which erupted in the wake of Trump’s election in 2016. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Trump, a man who has threatened to sue every one of his accusers and has openly bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” without their consent, is attempting to exact revenge on a movement designed to use the collective to force consequences for a handful of powerful predators.#MeToo was just one piece of a slate of shifting gender norms over the last decade. Now, we’re living in the middle of a backlash.Roe v Wade has fallen, a known sexual abuser is re-entering the Oval Office, and the very online far right has found a new slogan: “Your body, my choice.”In Susan Faludi’s 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,she writes that these moments of backlash are not random. They are “preemptive strikes”, which “have always been triggered by the perception – accurate or not – that women are making great strides”.The perception that women were gaining status at the expense of men’s, combined with the real ways in which many men in this country are struggling economically, socially and mentally, has seemingly helped fuel the Trump campaign.Trump sneered at “childless cat ladies”, courted Joe Rogan listeners and crypto-bros, and trotted out Hulk Hogan to perform hyper-macho drag at the Republican national convention. The campaign deployed far-right influencers to wax poetic on X – which Musk owns – about the dangers of “toxic femininity” and mock the peeing habits of men who supported Kamala Harris.On election day, Trump senior adviser and noted white nationalist Stephen Miller tweeted a very particular plea: “Get every man you know to the polls.” After Trump’s win, the far right were out in full force celebrating what they clearly perceived not just as a win for their preferred political leader, but for their gender as a whole; they flooded X and TikTok with the phrases “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” and crafted supercuts of liberal women crying.Perhaps what Trump is counting on is that people who oppose the draconian agenda of his administration will be so exhausted by the piling horrors that they’ll get overwhelmed and give up – that all of the allegations will blend together and the backlash will become the norm. And yet, we know where a backlash brews, so does a resistance to it. More

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      A ‘gut punch’: Trump’s alleged sexual assault victims and their advocates on his win

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      When Donald Trump was elected to a second term last week, women who say he sexually assaulted them, and other victims of sexual abuse, voiced disappointment that a man repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct could once again become president, with one of them describing this win as a “gut punch”.More than two dozen women have made such claims against Trump, including E Jean Carroll, who was awarded nearly $90m total in two civil trials after jurors found that Trump sexually abused and defamed her. She said on X: “I tried to tell you.”Several survivors of sexual assault interviewed by the Guardian, as well as advocates for persons who have suffered abuse, said they were not surprised by Trump’s win. They felt it was another example of how sexual abuse is not taken seriously, or pointed to the fact that powerful people who perpetrate abuse seem to be able to avoid repercussions.Stacey Williams, who said she met Trump through Jeffrey Epstein about three decades ago, and told the Guardian that the now president-elect groped her at Trump Tower in 1993 in what seemed to be a “twisted game” with the late sex predator, is among the many processing election results.“I think what we were all hoping was that [the] truth would come through and the stories would affect people’s vote once they had [them] in front of them.”But, she said: “Disinformation won this election at the end of the day, and if we don’t figure out an answer for that, I don’t have a lot of hope for this country.”Emails to Trump’s camp did not receive an immediate response. Trump has previously denied all allegations of misconduct.Williams said that she was in Pennsylvania canvassing for five days. “Some of the women would say: ‘Will you please tell my husband your story?” she recalled.One woman even brought Williams into the house, so she could tell the woman’s brother her account. Williams did and “I saw him just kind of like, sink.” To her, the reaction suggested that he had not heard this account before.“I didn’t get the impression he even knew that Trump was an offender.“I had never wanted to tell my story, I knew it was going to be sort of a big media firestorm and blow up – that’s a lot to take on, let alone all the backlash and the misogyny,” she also said. “I was bracing myself for that, but it was worth it if I could get my message out there.“None of it mattered. All he had to do was say: ‘Eh, she’s lying,’” Williams said, prompting his followers to take the same tack. “Everyone’s like: ‘OK, let’s move on.’ That’s a lot to stomach.”Among the women who have come forward with allegations against Trump is Amy Dorris, a former model, who told the Guardian that he sexually assaulted her at the US Open tennis tournament in 1997. Dorris alleged that Trump forced his tongue down her throat, groped her body and kept her in a grip from which she could not escape, in an incident that made her feel “sick” and “violated”.Two other prominent accusers include Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds, who testified in court for Carroll’s civil proceedings against Trump. Stoynoff said that Trump assaulted her in a room at Mar-a-Lago about 20 years ago, when People magazine had sent her there to interview him about his first year of marriage to his third wife, Melania Trump.Leeds came forward in 2016 claiming that Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt when they were seated next to each other on an airplane in the 1970s. At a campaign rally, Trump responded by saying: “Believe me, she would not be my first choice. That I can tell you,” and a campaign spokesperson said her allegation was “fiction”.Marissa Hoechstetter, who successfully pushed for New York’s watershed Adult Survivors Act, among other extensive advocacy, following her abuse at the hands of a now convicted obstetrician, said Trump’s win underscored that many people don’t see sexual violence as a problem.“It reaffirms that sexual violence is tolerated and it’s not disqualifying,” Hoechstetter said. “I don’t think it’s whether or not we proved that he did these things – I feel like it was [proved] – we’ve proved that people still don’t care.”“I’m not shocked by it; it’s a good reminder for us all that sexual violence is not an issue that people are willing to make big decisions on. There are other factors that are more important to them.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHoechstetter believes that Trump’s victory could have a “chilling effect down the line”. His win doesn’t take away survivors’ advocacy efforts, but “it negates all of the work that went into trying to hold him accountable in a court of law,” potentially deterring accusers from coming forward if they see that nothing will happen – especially given the immense personal toll that comes with speaking out.Erica Vladimer, co-founder of the Sexual Harassment Working Group, said she wasn’t surprised that Trump won despite his reported behavior towards women. (The Sexual Harassment Working Group is comprised of former New York city and state legislative staffers who have experienced harassment, abuse, and retaliation by officials, and seeks to change laws and policies to protect workers.)“I have never been under this illusion that the fact that Trump is a serial sexual harasser and a sexual abuser was top of mind for most voters – that it was a priority when it came to who they were going to vote for as president,” Vladimer said. “And yet, that does not make this gut punch any easier to stomach.”“Until our institutions, the people who hold that power, are willing to say this is not OK, I think we’re going to see men like Trump continue to amass power and enable this permission structure that has really been there for a long time,” Vladimer said.Trump’s second win prompted questions about why a president’s character does not appear to matter to voters – as well as about the character of those he surrounds himself with. The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, who has been investigated for alleged sexual misconduct and trafficking, is Trump’s attorney general pick. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.Weeks before the 2016 election, a hot mic recording from the Access Hollywood television show emerged. In this recording, Trump boasted that he could sexually assault women due to his fame, saying: “Just kiss. 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.”Following Trump’s win, the phrase “your body, my choice” – which had circulated in far-right circles for several years – gained momentum on social media. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a thinktank that studies extremism, identified “a 4,600% increase in mentions of the terms ‘your body, my choice’ and ‘get back in the kitchen’ on X”.Gloria Allred, who in her decades as an attorney has advocated for survivors, including five Trump accusers, said: “a theme of the former president’s recent campaign appeared to be male chauvinism” and referred to the American Psychological Association guidance that recognizes “traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful” to men and boys.But, “I believe that women and girls will also suffer from this version of toxic masculinity, and they are endangered by it. Evidence of this is now seen online where some young men seem comfortable saying ‘your body, my choice’, which could be the mantra of rapists, sexual harassers and child molesters,” Allred said in a statement.“I wonder how these young men would feel if other men decided that they had a right to rape, beat or abuse the bodies of the young men’s mothers, sisters, aunts or grandmothers,” Allred’s statement continued. “My guess is that when these young men get older and have daughters they will regret their words.”Mariann Wang, an attorney whose practice focuses on survivors who has also represented Trump accusers, said his win was “devastating”.“It is an expression, yet again, that millions of people do not prioritize the safety of their mothers, their sisters, their daughters or their friends,” she said in a statement.“That said, I’ve also seen the enormous courage and power of so many women willing to keep fighting for their rights and for equality all these years,” Wang said. “And as devastating as this is, I know all those women and men who support them will keep fighting.” More

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      Stormy Daniels gets more than $900K from GoFundMe after alleged threats

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      Stormy Daniels’ supporters have raised more than $900,000 meant to help her move to a safe house and repay legal fees after testifying in the criminal trial that led to Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felonies.The money comes from an online GoFundMe campaign started by a friend and former manager of the adult film actor, who recently appeared on MSNBC and described how supporters of Trump have bombarded her with social media harassment as he seeks a second presidency, including threats to rape and murder her daughter and other family.“It’s become unsafe for her family and her pets,” the fundraiser’s organizer, Dwayne Crawford, wrote on the page for the campaign, which set a goal of $1m. “Stormy needs help to relocate her family to somewhere they can feel safe and live on their terms.“She needs assistance to be able to continue to pay the mounting fees so that Trump doesn’t just win because his pocketbook seems endless.”The so-called I Stand with Stormy Daniels campaign – which had raised more than $940,000 from about 17,600 donors as of Friday – follows her key role in getting Trump convicted in late May on charges of falsifying business records.Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about an extramarital sexual encounter that she has alleged to have had with Trump a decade prior to his 2016 presidential election victory. The payment to Daniels was falsely recorded as legal expenses, according to prosecutors, who ultimately won a conviction against Trump in a New York state courthouse with the help of testimony from Daniels.The US supreme court on Monday held that presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution in connection with their actions in office – which should aid Trump substantially as he tries to defeat criminal cases pending against him on charges of improperly retaining classified records and of trying to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden.One of the more immediate consequences of the supreme court’s ruling was for New York judge Juan Merchan to delay Trump’s sentencing in the case that ensnared Daniels. It had originally been scheduled for 11 July, but Merchan tentatively reset the proceeding for 18 September after the former president’s legal team asked him to delay it in light of the immunity decision.Meanwhile, Daniels told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday that she had been inundated with Facebook messages threatening “to rape everybody in my family, including my young daughter, before they killed them”.“I’ve lost … mostly my peace, mostly my daughter’s privacy, and time – time I’ll never get back with her,” Daniels said in reference to her participation in the prosecution against Trump.She also detailed how she owed $500,000 in attorneys’ fees – which she could not afford to pay – over a civil defamation lawsuit that she filed against Trump in 2018.Among those who expressed support for Daniels after her interview with Maddow was writer E Jean Carroll, who sued Trump over allegations of rape and defamation – and won nearly $90m in civil penalties from him. “I’d be happy to help!!” she wrote on X on Tuesday night.But one of the voices to come out against Daniels was her former attorney Michael Avenatti, who remained imprisoned for defrauding her and other clients.In a Wednesday post on X, he dismissed Daniels’ fundraising campaign as “GoFundMe grift” and “complete bullshit”, arguing that the alleged threats were not coming from Trump personally. Avenatti’s comments brought him his own detractors, with some X users accusing him of angling for a pardon from Trump in case he wins a return to the White House in November.Crawford, the Daniels fundraiser organizer, wrote that he had been motivated to get involved after he and his friends were given “front-row seats to the parts of this story that don’t fit neatly into click-bait headlines”.“If we allow Stormy, after choosing to stand up to the president of these United States, to lose her life, her liberty or her happiness, then we have failed at the very foundational core of what this nation was built upon,” Crawford added. More

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      Trump, the ‘law-and-order’ candidate, is an adjudicated fraudster | Lloyd Green

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      The week-that-was will likely weigh heavily on the 45th president for the months and years to come. On Friday, Arthur Engoron, a New York judge, found Donald Trump and his businesses liable for conspiracy and ordered them to pay $355m. On top of that, the court banned Trump and his two adult sons from serving at the helm of any New York company for three years, while imposing a $4m penalty on both of the boys.In a 92-page decision, Engoron also lacerated Trump’s pretensions of credibility. He repeatedly tagged Trump for his allergy to the truth.“Donald Trump rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial,” the decision reads. “His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility.”He added that the court had “found preliminarily that defendants had a propensity to engage in persistent fraud by submitting false and misleading Statements of Financial Condition … on behalf of Donald Trump”.One footnote in the legal judgment went like this: “Peterson-Withorn, Chase. ‘Donald Trump Has Been Lying About The Size of His Penthouse.’ Forbes, May 3, 2017.”For the record, Trump invoked his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times at deposition. “Anyone in my position not taking the fifth amendment would be a fool, an absolute fool,” he said. It is all of a piece.Trump is on a roll, of sorts. One day earlier, Juan Merchan, a second Manhattan judge, set a 25 March start date for Trump’s trial on state-law felony charges. “Stop interrupting me,” the judge scolded the defendant’s legal team.Merchan also denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the underlying 34-count indictment. According to Manhattan prosecutors, Trump purportedly directed hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, and Karen McDougal, an adult model.But Trump’s streak doesn’t end there. Last week, a US court of appeals rejected his demand for absolute immunity. US presidents are not kings, the court reminded us.“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a president has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power,” the unsigned but unanimous opinion read.“We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”Then again, the US supreme court may put the case on ice. We may know more next week.Appeals are expensive. Trump will also need to bond or otherwise secure the mammoth-sized judgment. Interest accrues too. Regardless, others must pay for his sins.The forced departure of Ronna McDaniel from the helm of the Republican National Committee signals that Trump intends to make the RNC a personal piggy bank. After essentially self-financing his primary run in 2016, he turned up his palms to face off against Hillary Clinton. According to campaign finance filings, his political committees have shelled out more than $50m in legal fees.The ex-reality show host has not always been awash in cash. “My net worth fluctuates,” Trump once swore. “It goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings.”His casinos have gone bust, his companies bankrupted a half-dozen times. Restructurings pock his borrowings. Trump University is no more.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFilings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, first uncovered by the Guardian in 2016, placed his liquidity at north of $250m as of mid-2011, his wealth at $4.2bn. This past October, Forbes pegged his worth at $2.6bn. He did not make its iconic 400 richest list. “He’s nowhere near as rich as he boasts, nor as poor as some critics claim.”The value of his assets appears to have shrunk even as his liquidity has grown. “I have over 400 – fairly substantially over $400m in cash,” he recently testified. These days, he’s staring at judgments hovering near $450m.The latest blows come on the heels of January’s $83.3m verdict in E Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial. Heading toward November, the “law-and-order” candidate is an adjudicated predator. Lewis Kaplan, the presiding judge in the Carroll cases, stressed that Trump had sexually assaulted her.Guilty verdicts loom as possibilities in both the hush money and election interference cases. Manhattan juries don’t love him, judging by the size of the recent Carroll verdict. DC juries previously convicted Trump’s cronies Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro and Roger Stone. January 6 defendants have also fared poorly.Trump later pardoned Bannon and Stone. He has vowed to do the same for those who stormed the Capitol in his name.Americans aren’t enamored with a convicted felon sitting in the Oval Office. Then again, they haven’t cottoned to the incumbent. By itself, Friday’s ruling will sway few. On the other hand, wavering voters may get off the fence if a criminal conviction or two follow.Days ago, Trump raged against Letitia James and Engoron. He blasted the attorney general as “corrupt”, the judge as “biased”, the case as “rigged”.It’s been nearly a decade since he hosted The Apprentice. The former reality show host sounds scared. Welcome to the theatre of the real.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      E Jean Carroll lawyer says Trump used coded version of C-word against her

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      E Jean Carroll’s attorney says Donald Trump used a coded expression to call her the C-word during a deposition before she helped the magazine columnist win an $83.3m verdict in her defamation case against the former president.Roberta Kaplan shared the anecdote during an appearance on Friday on the George Conway Explains It All podcast, saying it happened while Trump was deposed at his Mar-a-Lago resort as part of an unrelated, since-dismissed case in which he faced accusations of collaborating with a fraudulent marketing company.As Kaplan told it, at the end of the questioning, Trump’s attorneys ensured the two sides were no longer on the record before he looked at her and remarked: “See you next Tuesday.”The phrase is well-known, thinly veiled code for perhaps the most offensive misogynistic insult that can be directed at a woman, combining words that sound like the first two letters of the word – “C” and “U” – along with words that start with the letters “N” and “T”.Kaplan told Conway that she initially didn’t understand the meaning of what Trump said because the opposing sides weren’t scheduled to meet that upcoming Tuesday. “I, thank God, had no idea what that meant, so I said to him, ‘What are you talking about? I’m coming back on Wednesday,’” Kaplan remarked. “Literally, it was an honest answer. I had no idea what he’s talking about.”Colleagues of Kaplan informed her what Trump had meant by saying “see you next Tuesday” once they were all in their car driving away from Trump’s property, she said.“That is a teenage boy-level joke,” the podcast co-host Sarah Longwell said.View image in fullscreenKaplan replied: “Had I known, I for sure would have gotten angry … I looked like I was being above it all, which I wasn’t. I just did not know.”Conway – a conservative attorney formerly married to Trump’s White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway – punctuated Kaplan’s recollections by saying: “So that’s just an amazing story.”According to Kaplan, Trump had also thrown a temper tantrum that day when his legal team offered to provide lunch to Kaplan and her associates.“There was a huge pile of documents, exhibits, sitting in front of him, and he took the pile and he just threw it across the table – and stormed out of the room,” Kaplan said.That claim in particular called to mind another anecdote produced by testimony to the congressional committee that investigated the Capitol attack staged by Trump supporters after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. A former White House aide testified that Trump angrily threw a plate of food at a wall in the White House – smearing it with ketchup – after his attorney general at the time publicly denied that there had been voter fraud in the race won by Biden.Kaplan represented Carroll in a separate legal matter that saw the former Elle magazine writer sue Trump on accusations that he sexually abused her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s. Carroll’s lawsuit asserted that Trump then defamed her as he attacked her credibility.On 26 January, a jury in federal court in New York awarded Carroll $18.3m in compensatory damages as well as $65m in punitive retribution over defamatory statements that Trump made against her. Those damages were in addition to an award of about $5m that the presumptive 2024 Republican White House nominee was ordered to pay in May after being found liable for abusing Carroll.Trump has said he intends to appeal the recent verdict awarded to Carroll, which came as he grapples with more than 90 criminal charges in various jurisdictions for subversion of the 2020 election, illegal retention of government secrets after he left the Oval Office, and hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has alleged extramarital sex with him.For her part, Kaplan appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday and expressed confidence that her team would be able to collect the judgment against Trump.“We might not get it right way,” she said. “But one way or the other, he owns a lot of real estate. It can be sold.” More

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      ‘He’s nothing’: E Jean Carroll says ‘we don’t need to be afraid’ of Donald Trump

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      E Jean Carroll says the $83.3m awarded to her in her defamation case against Donald Trump shows “we don’t need to be afraid” of the former president.“It was an astonishing discovery for me – he’s nothing,” Carroll said on Monday night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show. Comparing Trump to “a walrus snorting” and “a rhino flopping his hands”, the former Elle magazine columnist added: “He can be knocked down.”The jury in Carroll’s case against Trump in federal court in New York decided on Friday that she deserved $65m and $18.3m in punitive and compensatory damages, respectively, after defamatory statements the presumptive 2024 Republican White House nominee made against her over allegations that he sexually abused her.Those damages were in addition to an award of about $10m against Trump in May, when another jury held the ex-president liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s.Carroll spent Monday making the rounds on the national media circuit, first appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America and pledging to give money from her judgment to something Trump “hates”, such as “a fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by him”.She also said on Good Morning America that she was terrified to confront Trump in open court alongside her attorney but ultimately came to realize that he was like “an emperor without clothes”.Carroll revisited that theme in her later conversation on Maddow’s show.“Three, four days before trial, I had an actual breakdown,” Carroll told Maddow. “I lost my ability to speak, I lost my words, I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t go on … That’s how frightened I was.”But Carroll reiterated her imagination was worse than anything she encountered.“Amazingly, I looked out, and he was nothing,” Carroll said to Maddow. “He was nothing. He was a phantom. It was the people around him who were giving him power. He himself was nothing.”Carroll also joked to Maddow that she would take her shopping for a new wardrobe and buy her a penthouse with some of the money Trump had been ordered to pay up.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionElsewhere on Friday, Trump went on Truth Social after the decision came down and fumed about how the US court system was “out of control”.He also said he intended to appeal the verdict awarded to Carroll, which came in the middle of his legal problems seemingly multiplying.Not only has other civil litigation in New York put his business practices under scrutiny, he is also facing more than 90 criminal charges in various jurisdictions. Some of those charges include attempting to forcibly overturn the results of the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after his presidency, and giving hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him.Carroll and her lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said on Monday on Good Morning America that they were confident they would collect Friday’s judgment against Trump.“I think we planted our flag,” Carroll added on MSNBC. “I think we’ve made a statement that things are going to be different – that there is going to be a new way of doing this in this country.” More

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      E Jean Carroll aims to give defamation money ‘to something Trump hates’

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      E Jean Carroll intends to spend the $83m awarded to her in her defamation trial against Donald Trump on something the former president “hates”, she revealed just days after the judgment.On Friday, the jury in Carroll’s case decided that she should receive $18.3m in compensatory damages and $65m punitive retribution in the case pitting her against Trump. Of the $18.3m, Trump was told to pay Carroll $11m to fund a reputational repair campaign and $7.3m for the emotional harm caused by statements he made against her in 2019.Carroll and her legal team did not speak to reporters as they left court but broke their public silence on Monday in an interview with Good Morning America.Alongside her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Carroll told host George Stephanopoulos that Friday’s win had left her overcome with “elation”.“It filled me up … It was almost painful,” she said, adding: “Today, I’m very happy.Stephanopoulos asked her to give the public an idea as to how she planned to spend the millions of dollars she’s won, and Carroll provided a clear outline.“I’d like to give the money to something Donald Trump hates,” Carroll said. “If it’ll cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that’s my intent.”Carroll also said that she would perhaps explore giving to “a fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump”.Trump went on his Truth Social platform to decry Friday’s decision as “absolutely ridiculous” and said he would be filing an appeal.“Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon,” Trump’s Truth Social post said in part. “THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”Pointing to Trump’s combative response, Stephanopoulos asked Carroll’s attorney whether or not their side expected to collect the money awarded to them. Kaplan said that she was “pretty confident”.“We might not get it right away. But one way or the other, he owns a lot of real estate. It can be sold. We will collect the judgment,” Kaplan said.In the weeks leading up to the trial, Carroll revealed that she wasn’t sleeping or eating in anticipation of facing the former president.A judge determined Trump had defamed Carroll after sexually abusing her in a department room dressing store in the mid-1990s and subsequently defamed her.However, once she arrived for the trial that produced Friday’s judgment, Carroll said seeing Trump was like seeing “an emperor without clothes”.“It was like he was like nothing, like an emperor without clothes,” Carroll said. “All my terror leading up to it, and there he is. He’s just something in a suit.”The recent trial was separate from one about a year earlier in which Carroll won $5m for sexual abuse and separate, earlier remarks which had also defamed her. The proceeding was mostly absent of theatrics, though Trump caused a stir when he walked out during Kaplan’s closing statement.Asked about her reaction to that moment, Kaplan quipped that she felt the moment won Carroll about $10m.“The idea in a case where our basic thesis is that he’s a bully who can’t follow the rules, to act like a bully who doesn’t follow the rules? An interesting strategy, let me put it that way,” Kaplan said about how Trump stormed out during her closing statement.Kaplan went on to note that if Trump goes on to defame Carroll again, they would “bring another case”.“It’s just going to be more money,” Kaplan said. More

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      Donald Trump ordered to pay E Jean Carroll $83.3m in defamation trial

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      A New York City jury awarded $83.3m to E Jean Carroll in her defamation trial against Donald Trump on Friday.Carroll will receive $18.3m in compensatory damages and $65m in punitive retribution. The former president is paying Carroll compensatory damages of $18.3m – $11m to fund a reputational repair campaign. The $7.3m is for the emotional harm caused by Trump’s 2019 public statements. Carroll and her legal team were beaming as they left court in a black SUV. They did not answer questions immediately after court let out.Moments after the decision was announced, Trump decried it as “absolutely ridiculous” on Truth Social, and said he would be filing an appeal.“I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party,” Trump wrote. “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”The Manhattan federal court decision comes less than one year after Carroll won $5m in her sexual abuse and defamation trial against Trump.This sum stems from Carroll’s rape claim against the president in a June 2019 New York magazine article. The publication ran an excerpt of her then-forthcoming book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.In that excerpt, Carroll said that Trump raped her inside the dressing room of a luxe Manhattan department store around early 1996. The tenor of Trump’s denials – saying, for example, that she lied and was a political operative – became the subject of her 2019 defamation suit against him.At the time, Carroll could not sue Trump over the alleged assault, as it would have taken place outside the civil statute of limitations. A novel New York state law in 2022, the Adult Survivors Act, opened a one-year window for adult accusers to file suit for incidents outside the civil statute of limitations.Carroll filed another lawsuit, this one over the incident and defamatory statements after Trump’s presidency ended. This lawsuit proceeded to trial first and the judge in both cases, Lewis Kaplan, determined jurors’ findings – that Trump sexually abused Carroll and tarnished her reputation – would be accepted as fact in this trial.As a result, Trump could not re-litigate her sexual abuse claim. The jurors were tasked only with weighing financial penalties for damaging Carroll’s reputation – and the sum required to keep Trump from making still more defamatory statements.“I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me, and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened,” Carroll said on the stand. “He lied, and it shattered my reputation. I expected him to deny it, but to say it was consensual, when it was not. But that’s what I expected him to say.”She continued: “The thing that really got me about this was, from the White House, he asked if anyone had any information about me, and if they did, to please come forward as soon as possible, because he wanted the world to know what’s really going on – and that people like me should pay dearly.”Trump did not attend Carroll’s first trial but made appearances at the second – marking the first time she confronted him publicly in a courtroom. Trump’s comportment during the courtroom showdowns was in keeping with his infamously bombastic behavior, prompting warnings from the judge.“Mr Trump has the right to be present here. That right can be forfeited, and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive, which is what has been reported to me, and if he disregards court orders,” Kaplan warned.“Mr Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial … I understand you are probably very eager for me to do that.”“I would love it, I would love it,” Trump retorted with a gesture.“I know you would, you just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently,” Kaplan said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe end stages of this trial were also marked by another hallmark of Trump’s legacy: Covid-related chaos. On 22 January, trial proceedings were postponed as one juror experienced coronavirus symptoms; his leading attorney, Alina Habba, also told judge Kaplan that she felt unwell and had been exposed to Covid.Trump did take the stand on 25 January. Kaplan restricted the scope of her questions and his responses, as per his prior ruling that he could not re-litigate her claims.Habba was allowed to ask: “Do you stand by your testimony in the deposition?”“One hundred percent, yes,” he said, referring to the deposition in which he denied her claims.“Did you deny the allegation because Ms Carroll made an accusation?”“That’s exactly right. She said something, I consider it a false accusation. No difference,” Trump retorted. This sparked an objection from Carroll’s camp. Kaplan said that everything after “yes, I did” was stricken.“Did you ever instruct anyone to hurt Ms Carroll in your statements?”“No. I just wanted to defend myself, my family, and frankly, the presidency,” Trump said. Carroll’s team objected again. Kaplan deemed that everything after “no” be stricken, so jurors were ordered to disregard this statement.In total, Trump’s direct and cross testimony lasted about two or three minutes. More