E. Jean Carroll Turns Heads With New Claim About Trump
Former Elle magazine writer E. Jean Carroll said Wednesday that she believes President Donald Trump might have persuaded at least one juror to avoid finding him liable for battery and defamation if he had testified in the first civil trial she brought against him.
Carroll sued Trump for rape and defamation, alleging he assaulted her in a Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s. In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for battery and defamation—but not rape. During a joint Substack livestream with former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance, Carroll expressed her view that the jury’s composition could have favored Trump had he taken the stand, the Daily Caller reported on Friday.
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“Honestly, without pulling any punches — me to you, Joyce … This is the first trial. Trump was out on that golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, saying, ‘Oh, I got to go back because this woman I’ve never met.’ And [attorney Joe] Tacopina talked him into not coming,” Carroll said.
“If he had come to court, of course [lawyer] Robbie Kaplan would have cross-examined him for about seven hours, and he probably would not have survived that,” she added.
“But Trump … convinced half the nation to vote for him for president. They tried to impeach him twice and yet he came back. He was running in first place for president when Tacopina talked him out of it. I think if he had come back and gone on the stand, I think he could have convinced one juror,” she continued.
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“One juror. And I think he could have hung the jury. There were several people on our jury from upstate New York, which is Trump country. Remember, this was not a Manhattan jury. This was an upstate, upper-county — Orange County, by the way is Trump,” she said.
According to Spectrum News 1, Donald Trump won Orange County by more than 8% against former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
“So we did not have a liberal, avocado-toast-eatin’ jury. We had an upstate, Trump-favoring jury … I think if he had come back and sat through the eight hours of Robbie Kaplan’s cross-examination — if he had lived through that — I think he could have convinced one juror,” Carroll added. “And I think he could have hung it.”
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Carroll filed a lawsuit against Trump after he denied knowing her and dismissed her allegations as a “hoax and a lie.” The jury ultimately awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
In a separate defamation trial, a second jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in January 2024.
On Tuesday, Carroll expressed her intention to use the awarded funds—though she has not yet received them—to support causes she believes will anger Trump, sharing her enthusiasm for the idea.
Trump has criticized both verdicts, calling them “absolutely ridiculous” in a January 2024 Truth Social post.
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Last week, a federal appeals court turned away an attempt by Trump to have a lower court’s ruling in his $5 million case overturned.
The decision, first reported on the X platform by Politico’s Kyle Cheney, stemmed from a divided Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in which all 11 judges were involved en banc. The ruling left intact a three-judge decision on Dec. 30 to enforce the jury award.
In requesting reconsideration, Trump argued that the trial judge made a mistake by allowing jurors to view the 2005 Access Hollywood video, in which he boasted about his sexual behavior, along with what he described as a “pile-on” of prejudicial evidence involving allegations from two other women.
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“Two of the Trump appointees, Judges Steven Menashi and Michael Park, on the bench dissent from the en banc decision, saying the judge shouldn’t have admitted ‘propensity’ evidence like the Access Hollywood tape,” Cheney reported on X.
