The MeidasTouch Podcast - E. Jean Carroll Tells All About Defeating Trump at Trials

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas interviews E. Jean Carroll and her attorney Robbie Kaplan as the two break their silence about the two federal trials where Carroll defeated Donald Trump and Carroll and Kaplan share exclusive details about the trial that they have never shared before. Meiselas also discusses how E. Jean Carroll has just released her new book “Not My Type” available everywhere. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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if you win. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. You don't want to miss out. I'm joined by E. Jean Carroll and her incredible lawyer Robbie Kaplan. E. Jean Carroll is breaking her silence. She took Donald Trump on in federal court, prevailing twice. Donald Trump threw everything he could at E. Jean Carroll and her legal team led by Robbie Kaplan. In fact, he's still doing that, trying to invoke the Westfall Act once again to substitute the United States government in the case

where E. Jean Carroll prevailed in a defamation matter against Donald Trump. Getting a large verdict there. We'll talk about that with Robby Kaplan as well. But E. Jean, breaking your silence here on the Midas Touch Network, you're out with this new book, Not My Type. Tell us, how do you feel, what's going on? What's your reaction just to everything

that's happening right now? Well, Ben, you asked how I felt five years ago when you have five followers. Now you've got 50 or what? Five, six million followers. And I am still fabulous, but even more fabulous now. Thank you, Ben. Well, tell us, you know, E. Jean, you've seen what Donald Trump has now done back in power. You've seen how he's used the legal system to try to bulldoze over people's rights.

And he tried everything against you with all of his money, with all of his resources, with all of his minions reflecting on this moment about what you went through. E. Jean, what's your what's your message to the American people right now? Well, the headline in Newsweek about 20 minutes ago about the book was Comedy Gold. And what this what we're what Robbie and I have always done and what this book does is we approach things in a light way because we understand this is a man who wears apricot makeup with his hair twirled around his head like Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire who we can beat. Robbie figured that out five years ago, laid out our plan,

and we stayed very serious. This was a serious, dead serious trial, and the second trial was dead serious. But we kept it light. It was, I was amazed. I found myself in the middle of a high comedy, surrounded with characters. Ben, you are a litigator.

You can't even imagine. John Grisham himself could not have come up with characters like Alina Haba, Judge Lewis Kaplan, Joe Takapena, Robbie Ka-It was Joe Takapena alone shaped like Popeye. Got a voice like a shotgun in a gravel pit. Alina Habba, sometimes her hair is long, sometimes it's short, sometimes she's arrogant, sometimes she's nice, sometimes she's nice, sometimes she's loud, sometimes she's flirtatious.

She was amazing. So I was enthralled, and as an old journalist, I was taking notes, and I want people to know that one little short, five foot two inch woman about the size of an Olsen twin, and one old lady, 81 years old, took on Donald Trump, and we won. Twice.

Robbie Kaplan, going to you, the strategy that you had, I mean, yes, we know the trials. We were covering them here on the Midas Touch Network, but as a former litigator, the trial is in many ways what you look forward to, but all the work that goes into the trial, the depositions that were taking place, all of Donald Trump's procedural maneuvers, the delay tactics that were used, how he wouldn't participate in discovery, and then he would try to play the victim and say, oh, now I want to do this. So you saw it from a legal perspective. Obviously, I'm not asking you to give your legal secrets, but what observations

do you have generally, and how could that be applied? Robbie to the current moment that we're in So first, let me say that to the extent anyone was funny in this case. It was E Jean I play the straight man, I think pretty much throughout the trial and throughout her book. So I take no credit for being funny at all But the circumstances we were in were both tragic in one way, exhilarating in one way, and incredibly probably funny throughout. And I think the one lesson that could be learned from how we litigated this, both E. Jean and my team and myself, is stay the course. It took a long time.

We're still not done. It's taken a very long time to get to where we are. It took stubbornness on our part. When I my son just graduated high school, but when he was a little boy, I used to read him this book called Dog Needs a Bone. And in this case was our bone. And we all we we grabbed it in it in our mouths and we held onto it the whole time. And I think the ultimate lesson is that the courts have and are continuing to hold up

pretty well. We've gotten good rulings, obviously, from the district court. We've gotten a bunch of good rulings from the circuit court. There's another argument on Tuesday. Juries are good things. I think the reason we won this trial is because we had juries with rules of evidence following the truth rather than people watching things on YouTube or QAnon or God knows what and watching conspiracy theories. And in that system people get to the truth and they got to the truth here. The ultimate thing is we got to get her her money,

which I have not yet accomplished. Well, let's talk about that. The show me the money, get her the money. Let's talk about where we're at now. We covered here the Second Circuit's un-bonk ruling on the first case, sexual assault, $5 million. The un-bonk panel upheld what the three judge panel did and what the district court did.

Donald Trump arguably has the ability to bring that to the Supreme Court. We'll see what he does there. Separately. Yeah, we have said he intends to do that. So then separately, we have the defamation case, which was the other trial. Remind us the amount of that verdict and then what Donald Trump is doing because there's updates as recent as Wednesday of what Trump is doing by trying to once again bring the United States government in as a party to try to get rid

of this case. What's happening there? So, the verdict that you're talking about now, Ben, is called the Big Kahuna. It's just a little bit bigger than the $5 million verdict. It's $83.6 million, which today with interest is about $88 million. There is to be an argument next Tuesday before the Second Circuit arguing the merits of that case. They don't really have that much to argue because most of the factual development happened at the first trial

with Judge Kaplan knows what he was doing. But even then, obviously, Trump's motive has been to delay, to delay, to delay. The latest maneuver is to substitute again, try to substitute again the United States of America into the case as a defendant rather than Donald Trump. This is probably the third time they've tried that. We wrote motion papers saying you're too late, too little, forget about it.

And just today, the Second Circuit panel, who will hear the argument on Tuesday denied that motion. So we're going forward on Tuesday morning. Back to you, E. Jean. So Donald Trump has said a number of things about you after these trials. And the statements look a lot like the statements that you filed lawsuits and prevailed on. After you won the initial verdict, Donald Trump did a town hall on CNN and immediately started making comments about you in front of millions of people.

Now, we saw that that worked its way into amended versions of complaints and it was used, but not as a separate overall case. Let me just remind our viewers what he did and what CNN platformed the moment after he was found liable for sexual assault. And this was in May of 2023. Here, play this clip. Usually you leave office, you say, I'm sorry, but I'm going to back home. I'm back home to my family and everything. I'm going to be resigned. My poll numbers went up and they went up with the other fake charge too. Because what's happening is they're doing this for election interference. This woman, I don't know her, I never met her, I have no idea who she is, I had a picture taken years ago with her and her husband, nice guy, John Johnson,

he was a newscaster, very nice man, she called him an ape, happens to be African American, called him an ape, the judge wouldn't allow us to put that in. Her dog, or her cat, was named Vagina, the judge wouldn't us to put that in. Her dog or her cat was named Vagina. The judge wouldn't allow us to put that in. All of these things. But with her, they can put in anything. Access Hollywood could put in anything.

This is a jury of nine people who found you liable of sexual abuse. Do you think that that will deter women from voting for you? No, I don't think so because I think the whole thing, just so you understand, ready? I never met this woman. I never saw this woman. This woman said I met her at the front door of Bergdorf Good Rooms, which I rarely go into other than for a couple of charities. I met her in the front door. She was about 60 years old. And this is like 22, 23 years ago. So I we get the point and he didn't just do that there I could show you and I don't need to show you but he said that on multiple other occasions where he's held press conferences and he's done that. What's, I mean, what was your response to seeing that, though, on CNN after, you know, this important victory on a very, very serious issue?

He does that. And then more, you know, what a lot of people want to know is, are you considering filing another lawsuit against him based on his other defamatory remarks? Well, Robbie always said, all options on the table. But if you watch that CNN thing, he is making the crowd laugh about sexual assault. And then he tries to make himself look like he's the one who's suffering.

During the second trial, the $83.3 million one, he would go out and have press conferences with his American flags lined down Trump Tower, and he would say, quote, I'm the one who's suffering. I'm the one who should have the damages. And he would stand there like Saint Sebastian tied to the tree being shot with arrows. It was, it, it, it's shaking me a little bit to re-see it.

I haven't seen it for a while. And the thing is people believe him. He's President of the United States. He is one of the most powerful people on earth. Whenever they hear the President of the United States saying those terrible things, it shakes me. But it also makes me stronger. It's not a word of what he says is true.

Not a word. So that just gives Robbie and me more iron in our backbones and we go ahead. I just have to add one thing then because I can't help myself as a litigator. You remember on that clip he just said he rarely went to Bergdorf's? Yeah.

There was certain evidence that Judge Kaplan didn't let us get in before the jury. And one of those pieces of evidence was a book that Donald Trump wrote With his name on it that recommends that Bergdorf is one of his favorite places to go to buy gifts You know in a Robbie when I was showing that clip I asked my editor to cut it short because I actually saw that it was Causing E. Jean Payne Payne and I had other clips I'm gonna show

and I'm not gonna show it because I saw it impacting her. So I don't know if the audience saw, I said cut the clip. So there's clearly, this is clearly damaging to her. I don't still practice law, but I play one on YouTube and I play one on TV. But I still make sure I follow it and I teach law class over at USC. So to me, when I hear Donald Trump saying that, I'm just giving my opinion, it looks like the elements are met for another defamation case if one were to be brought. It looks like based on Judge Kaplan's prior rulings, there's what's

called race judicata where a lot of the rulings are already made with these statements. So it seems that if a case were to be brought, it would just once again be about damages. And if I'm understanding, E. Jean, with all options on the table, and I don't want to put words into your mouth, do you believe that there is a case for defamation to be made? And at this point, it's just a decision, honestly, if EGIN wants to go through that whole situation again, because going through a litigation like that is a grueling process for anyone. I agree completely with your legal analysis, Ben. All options are on the table and EG's damages unfortunately and sadly continue

because she continues to get absolutely horrific threats and emails and texts every time every time she opens her telephone. Robbie what was it like deposing Donald Trump? I'll show our viewers what just a brief portion of it and your incredible cross exam. But I wanna know being in that room with him, taking a deposition, you know, I remember, I took some high profile depositions in my time. I took a Supreme Court justice of California's

deposition in a case. I deposed a few owners of NFL teams in the Colin Kaplan case. But, you know, so having deposition of billionaires is one thing, but then having a billionaire who's a former president of the United States now current. Let me just show the viewers. Ben, may I say something before you show the clip? Robbie Kaplan told Donald Trump three times, three times that she was going to show him a picture of E. Jean Carroll.

She prepared him to see a picture of E. Jean Carroll three times, and now look what happened. And then after seeing this, Donald Trump then said something about you, which I don't think didn't fully register until afterwards, that he called you a very horrific thing and he and he did it in his own way. Anyway, let me show you the clip and then we'll go from there. I think so. Yes. And do you recall when you first saw this photo? At some point during the process, saw that's I guess her husband John Johnson who

was an anchor for ABC nice guy I thought I mean I don't know him but I thought he was pretty good at what he did. I don't even know who the woman let's say I don't know who it's Marla. I don't even know who the woman let's say I don't know who it's Marla You're saying marbles in this photo that's Marla. Yeah, that's that's my wife. Which one are you pointing to? No here Okay, you just pointed to was I see Carol And the person the woman on the right is your then wife, I don't know. This was the picture. I assume that's John Johnson. Is that because it's very blurry. Now in your June 20th. Kind of here, Alina Habba directing. So walk us through that moment, but more broadly, the depositions of Trump.

Well, I mean, he kind of set the stage. I was not trying to pull a fast one on Donald Trump there. I mean, I was very clear. He mentioned the photo and I said, let me show you the photo. And when he identified Eugene as Marla, I mean, I had a hard time kind of not jumping out of my seat. I was so happy about it. But then you can immediately see Habba trying to coach him, which he does, which I think looks terrible to a juror. And then the best part is it's classic Donald Trump,

because once he realizes he's wrong, what does he say? It's blurry. That photo is blurry. And the jury saw that photo and they knew it wasn't blurry. And that's why we want both of our jobs. Talk about what you learned of your book, Tyler, we gained to that deposition. Yeah, not my type, not my type. One of the questions during the deposition, when Donald Trump was trying to say why it was

that he didn't sexually assault you, he was saying was because she's not my type. When did you see that, E. Jean? And were you in the room when the deposition took place? Were you, did you watch the video after? How'd you see it? I heard about it afterwards. I wanted to sit next to Robbie during the deposition.

She ruled against it. I heard afterwards, they heard afterwards about it. And it's odd that the phrase, not my type used to be a a polite thing of both men and women, which you would say when you're not attracted to someone. Oh, not my type. And everybody accepted it as a polite thing. But when Donald Trump said it, because he was famous for denigrating women, remember

when he called Miss Universe, Miss Piggy? So he said it, the entire universe of women changed. And Robbie not only told him he was gonna see a photo of me three times, she then said, are your wives your type? Would you say Marla, is Marla Maples your type? Ivana is your type? She went through to see what was his type. And then he falls.

By the way, Robbie said that as a trap. She's all not going to admit it, but she set trap after trap and like Odysseus getting away from the monsters. It was unbelievable what she did. I mean... I'm sure Robbie will say also, the ultimate trap as litigators, the truth is, you walk someone right into the direction of the truth, and someone who lies can't keep all of their lies together.

And so, inevitably, they fall right into the most basic thing when you're just going through it. Robbie, what was it like when Donald Trump, I think it was during the first trial, just left the country? He went to Scotland and Ireland before he was gonna testify. And I was always wondering this

as someone covering the trial, was the deposition so effective that you didn't really care if he testified one way or another? And was him leaving the country a bigger statement in and of itself and not showing up to his own trial that it was like, because you could have potentially as the plaintiff forced him to testify in the trial.

How much of that can you share with us? Because I've always been wondering that. Yeah, so we were pretty happy with the deposition the way it turned out. And we did not need to put him in our case as long as we could show the deposition, parts of the deposition that we showed to the jury, which the judge permitted.

There were a lot of bets going on on our side of the team about whether he would actually show up. I don't know, I can't speak for Joe Takapina, but I think Joe was quite worried that if he did show up, then we would be able to show these clips to him and it would look even worse. But Judge Kaplan, it was kind of driving us all crazy because Judge Kaplan gave him until, first he said 10 p.m.

and then I said, could you make it 5 p.m. on the Sunday before closings to change his mind. And when he appealed that case to the Second Circuit at the argument and they said to him, to his counsel, and then to me, you know, did Mr. Wood have been harmless there? If any of the things he's complaining about, would it have made a difference?

And my answer was no. I said he did not put in any evidence. He had every chance to show up. And he did it. He may be sitting behind me in the courtroom today, but he wasn't there at the trial. And I think the jury understood exactly what that meant. Well, Ben, she's, again, unusual she's being modest,

which is unusual for Robbie. But if he had showed up, Ben, can you imagine Robbie Kaplan cross-examining Donald Trump on the stand. Just picture that she would pull his head off from his shoulders and feed it to him. Because once she had him in the chair. And was cross examining him, it would have been a terrible, terrible massacre. So I think Taka Taka Pina suggested me not show up. You know, I'll close with this and I want to hear from both of you.

There's so many lessons that I think we can extract from the trial now. Unfortunately, that Trump is in office. I mean, you talk about Donald Trump running away from the trial to avoid being cross-examined and then whining about it. I mean, just think about this past week. Donald Trump leaves the G7 the day before President Zelensky is supposed to arrive. He can't stay in a room with world leaders and adults who are having difficult conversations

for more than a short period of time. So there are these behavioral traits that I think can be extrapolated on unhuman behavior, which I've always tried to break down from my audience as being weakness and being, you know, for all of these qualities, you know, being unfit to serve and of course being found liable for sexual assault being a characteristic that should make you unfit as a shouldn't make you a leader. And then of course, Donald Trump goes around

and he gives speeches to the young Republicans. And he says, when I said what I said on the Access Hollywood, that was the most courageous thing any person's ever done before. And you look at that and I'm just like, when did we get like this? And how is this the world that we're living in because these qualities,

setting aside Republican, Democrat, it's just not good. And so to me, when I read your book, Not My Type, One Woman Versus President, yes, it's about your trial. Yes, it's about what you've been through, but it is one woman versus the president and that dynamic and that the power of anybody, to push for the truth and ultimately have the truth prevail is something deeply rooted inside us.

So speak to the people who are watching out there, the people who have been following your journey. What do you want them to know? Not just about your book, because they should all get your book, not my type one woman versus the president. But what do you want to tell them right now? Because they, a lot of people look up to you. Well, I like to tell them that old ladies can win lawsuits. I like to tell them that

when joy happens in your life, take that opportunity. I like to tell them that when joy happens in your life, take that opportunity. I like to tell them that our Carol trial team was so melded together and so on the same wavelength, two of our lawyers fell in love, deeply in love. And I like to tell people that this book, although we've been discussing very serious issues, this book is funny. And it's sort of like a big entertaining beach read. If you want to know all the idiosyncratic things that go on during a trial, if you want to know how Donald Trump smells, sounds, spits, farts, all of that, it's in this book. Well, I don't want to.

Can you speak to any of that before I think without giving away the book before giving away anything in the book? Any hints we could have on the latter part on the latter part? Well, you just said anyway, I'll go to Robbie. I'll let people read. No, you're here. I was so close, Ben. Ben, I was so close.

If I went this far and reached back, I could have him by the hair. I heard almost every single thing he said. Robbie had to stand up and object to Judge Kaplan saying, Your Honor, if we can hear him, what does the jury think? And by the way, Ben, when you looked at the jury, they were like stunned by the moaning and his groaning and his weeping and his snarling and his, oh,

he was very cruel to Alina Haba Esquire, really treated her terribly. She, I don't know how she carried on. But we were there. We saw everything. The farting, you wanted to know about that? I didn't say that, but we got it. It was a silent one.

It was a silent one, sort of. That's all. All right? I would say everyone buy the book. Imagine if some combination between Hunter S. Thompson and Nora Ephron wrote a book about being on trial against Donald Trump, that's this book. Thank you, Robbie.

That was good. We'll leave it at that. Not my type, one woman versus a president. I don't know how we could have covered more in a 26-minute interview. Thank you both for your generous time. Everybody get E. Jean Carroll's book, Not My Type, One Woman Versus a President. Thanks. Thank you both for your generous time. Everybody get E. Jean Carroll's book, Not My Type, One Woman Versus a President.

Thanks. Thank you both. Thank you so much. The truth is more important than ever. Check out our new Truth Over Lies collection at store.mitustouch.com. All 100% USA Union made.