The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump "Sexually Abused" E. Jean Carroll In 1990s, Jury Says

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

This episode includes discussion of sexual violence.Jurors found former President Donald Trump liable for battery and defamation in the civil lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store.While the jurors did not find that Trump raped Carroll, they agreed that he "sexually abused" her and that he defamed her when he denied her story. Carroll was awarded $5 million in total damages for both claims.And New York Republican Rep. George Santos, infamous for lies about his background, has pleaded not guilty to more than a dozen federal charges.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, reporter Andrea Bernstein, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Rob calling from beautiful and currently sunny Tacoma, Washington. I'm picking up sandwiches after finishing a planning commission meeting where I serve as a volunteer planning commissioner. This podcast was recorded at... It is 2.10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we'll still be reviewing minor code amendments and zoning changes here in the City of Destiny. Enjoy the show. Local government is extremely important and often very, very local. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And NPR's Andrea Bernstein is here with us. Hello there. Hey. And a warning on today's podcast, we will be talking about sexual violence. Former President Donald Trump is liable for battery and defamation against the writer E. Jean Carroll. She says Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s, and she sued him in civil court. Jurors did not find that Trump raped Carroll, but they agreed that there was a preponderance of evidence that he sexually abused her and that he defamed her when he denied the allegations, claiming she wasn't his type. Andrea, I don't know that we've actually talked about this case on the pod

before, but you've been following it closely. What did Carroll allege that Trump did? So this is E. Jean Carroll, who was in the 1990s, a renowned advice columnist. And what she says happened is she was walking out of a Bergdorf Goodman's department store, which is right near Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan. And she runs into Donald Trump walking in. And they have some lighthearted banter. And he asked her for help on a shopping errand for a woman friend of his. And they end up in the lingerie department.

And she says they're joking about a piece of lingerie that he's picked up. And then he steers her into the dressing room, and then all of a sudden everything turns tragic, she says, and he slams her against the wall of the dressing room, forces his fingers in her vagina, slams her again against the wall, and she manages to fight him off, runs out of the store, goes outside, immediately calls a friend. She remains silent for over two decades until after the Me Too movement, until 2019, when she publishes a book that describes, among other things, this incident. At the time, Trump tells reporters, she's not my type. Some years later, as her lawsuit proceeds, he doubles down on this.

And there's a new law in New York that goes into effect in November of 2022. She sues him right the day that it goes into effect and accuses him of battery and defamation. And that's the case that goes to trial. So tell us about that trial. How did it unfold? So the centerpiece is three days of her testimony, which includes both her direct testimony and cross-examination by Donald Trump's lying, that this is a hoax, that she concocted this story to sell books and for political motivations because she didn't like Donald Trump. There are 11 witnesses in this case. Donald Trump enters no witnesses, does not appear himself, but he's very much present in the

trial. And that's because E. Jean Carroll's attorney, Roberta Carroll, deposed him in the fall and asked him about a number of things, including the infamous Access Hollywood tape, where he describes behaving in a way very similar to what E. Jean Carroll said. And you say, and again, this has become very famous in this video, I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait.

And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p***. You can do anything. That's what you said, correct? Well, historically, that's true with stars. It's true with stars that they can grab women by the p***? Well, that's what, if you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true.

Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately. And we also have this other incredible moment when he couldn't really recognize E. Jean Carroll. Can you explain that? So in another part of the deposition, Trump is given a picture from roughly the period where Carroll says this incident took place of her and her former husband, a TV anchor in New York, Donald Trump and Ivana Trump. And he's asked to identify a woman with sort of blonde hair, smiling. And he says, that's Marla. Marla, referring to Marla Maples, his second wife, at which point his attorney jumps in and says, no, no, no, that's E. Jean Carroll. And he says, well, the photo is very blurry.

So what E. Jean Carroll's lawyer argued was that E. Jean Carroll was exactly Trump's type. And in her summations, Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer, says, in order for you, the jury, to disbelieve E. Jean Carroll, you have to believe that all 11 witnesses who testified were lying and that Donald Trump was lying when he said he could grab women by the genitals. And when that jury came back with its verdict in under three hours, and the first question that was asked was, did you decide by the preponderance of the evidence

that Trump raped E. Jean Carroll? And it said no. But the very second question was, did he sexually abuse her? And the jury said yes. And then from there, it was yes, yes, yes, he owes her $5 million. Yes, he defamed her. Yes, he did so with actual malice. And that was quite a striking verdict for the frontrunner for the GOP nomination for president. So this is a civil case. It's not a criminal case. So the evidentiary standard is not as high as it would be for a criminal case. It's not a criminal case. So the evidentiary standard is not as high as it would

be for a criminal case. But $5 million is nothing to sneeze at. And a verdict like this is quite serious. How has the former president responded? The former president has responded by insisting that he does not know E. Jean Carroll. His lawyer says he will appeal. But here's the difficulty. Donald Trump has been found liable for defamation for calling E. Jean Carroll a liar. However, in order for them to win an appeal or even win in the court of public opinion, essentially he and or his supporters have to argue exactly that, that she made this up, that she was lying. So I think what's different here, what's really shifted is that since the 2016 campaign, after the Access Hollywood tape, many women came forward to say they were sexually

abused in some way by Donald Trump. But here you have a jury of six men and three women deciding after a two-week trial that this happened and that the former president has to pay money for it. And that is a very situation legally and in terms of the truth than we've ever been in before with Donald Trump. And that's the territory that we're embarking on in this presidential campaign. Mara, I do want to ask about that, because these allegations are not new. These types of allegations against Trump are not new. People's views of him are pretty well baked in. Do you think that this verdict does change anything for him politically? Well, I think the easy answer is to say our experience tells us it shouldn't. Because as you said, people's views of him are baked in.

There are many Republican voters who plan to vote for him, even though they think that he is guilty, that they accept this verdict, that he was guilty of sexual assault. Look, it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. It's unclear what, not just what this verdict will mean for Donald Trump, but don't forget there are will be the tipping point in a very tribal political moment where people are willing to excuse the foibles and the shortcomings and even the crimes of the guy who's on their side. You know, we're in a different kind of moment. So I guess, like I said, the easy thing, based on our experiences, this shouldn't matter. But we

don't know what's going to happen going forward as these things start piling up. Andrea Bernstein, thank you so much for joining us on the pod. It's great to talk to you, Tam. Now it's time for a quick break. And when we get back, Congressman George Santos has been charged with a series of crimes. Here's a piece of advice if you're ever on the White House beat. Make sure you have three or four questions already in your head at any given moment when you are in the same room with the president because you don't know when spur of the moment he will call your name on live

television and you will have to ask him a question. Political interviews. Sometimes they strike at a moment's notice. Sometimes you prepare for weeks and go in with pages of notes and questions. And then if all goes well, none of that makes its way into the actual interview. And then you just have a real conversation with somebody. The art of the political interview in our latest bonus episode available now. A reminder, those episodes come out every two weeks as a thank you to our NPR Politics Podcast Plus supporters. Learn more at plus.npr.org. That's plus as in P-L-U-S dot N-P-R dot org. And we're back with Justice Correspondent Kerry Johnson. Hey, Kerry. Hey there. New York Republican Congressman George Santos, a first term congressman who lied about

countless aspects of his biography, has pleaded not guilty to 13 different charges, a host of financial crimes alleged. And just to give you a sense of the scope of his lies, he lied about where he went to college, where he worked. He lied about his mother dying on 9-11, and he lied about being Jewish, saying later that he had meant to say that he was Jew-ish. But those lies aren't a crime. Carrie, what are the specifics of these charges? Tam, there are over a dozen charges. They include wire fraud for allegedly soliciting money from campaign donors to pay for TV ads. And instead, the money was diverted to pay for some of Santos' personal expenses, including what prosecutors say was designer clothing.

We've got money laundering charges. We've got theft of public funds. That relates to allegations that Santos applied for pandemic-era unemployment aid, even though he was working for a company at the time the Securities and Exchange Commission later called a Ponzi scheme. And then finally, we've got lying to the House of Representatives on financial disclosure forms about the sources of his wealth. And in a truth is stranger than fiction twist, the House is actually supposed to vote this week on a bill that he co-authored that would help states crack down on fraudulent COVID unemployment claims. And now he is accused of making one of those claims himself. As with so many things related to George Santos, you can't make it up. If you had said it,

people would have thought you were lying. And the truth is just much stranger than any fiction. Mara, we talk a lot about the end of shame in politics or the rise of shamelessness. But it turns out that there is another accountability system for politicians other than the voters, and that is the legal system. That's right. And the legal system grinds on in its own way. And then voters get to decide whether they want to vote for someone who's been indicted or convicted, or in some cases, running for office from jail. So George Santos has said he's not going to resign, and he's going to run for re-election. And his voters in his district are going to get a chance to vote for or against him based on a whole lot of new information they didn't have before. And let me just point out, this is an incredibly fast clip for the Justice Department

to move in this case. You know, DOJ just started investigating prosecutors and federal agents in the Eastern District of New York, it seems like in December. Here we are in May, this guy's already been indicted. He's been released on bond and had to turn over his passport. But there's a lot of paper evidence in this case that's going to be very hard to fight. And so I'm not sure how soon the matter may come to trial, but he hasn't got a lot of strong defenses under his belt. So their question really does turn to whether Congress might expel him or if President is a guide, whether he'll be convicted and quietly leave after that. Right. Mara, House Republican leaders have certainly been asked about whether they are

going to push Santos out, and they don't seem to be in any rush to do that. No, they have very narrow majority. If they do push him out, it's possible he'd be replaced by a Democrat. I think they're just happy to let the legal system take its toll and then let voters decide. And there is some precedent for that. Yeah, there are definitely other members of Congress who've had legal problems. And yeah, it's been up to their voters. And we know that in one case long, long time ago, Eugene Debs ran for office from a prison cell. So voters definitely get the last say in these matters. One of the oddities that's always captured my attention is that on the Hill,

Santos has the office occupied by a former Congressman Collins, who previously was indicted and wound up being convicted of federal criminal charges. So it happens, and then the people go and leave Congress as part of a plea deal, or after their conviction. There is, unfortunately, some precedent for this kind of situation. Yeah, and then even in races outside of Congress, remember in 1991 when Edwin Edwards in Louisiana ran against David Duke, who was a KKK member, and somebody had a bumper sticker, vote for the crook. It's important.

Oh, golly. Because Edwards had been... If we went through the list, we would have to have like a whole week worth of podcasts, really. There is, it turns out, a lot of precedent. Oh, friends, I'm from Illinois, so we could be here into next week. Yes. But Carrie, in terms of the roadmap, where does it go from here? Santos has his next court date on Long Island in June.

And the question is whether the evidence against him is sufficiently strong that he may be persuaded to try to consider a plea deal. We won't know about that for many weeks to come, but I'm certainly going to be watching that angle of the story moving forward. And so will we. We are going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.