Today, Explained - Trump loses sexual abuse lawsuit

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

A New York jury awarded $5 million to journalist E. Jean Carroll, whose civil suit against the former president alleged sexual battery and defamation. Vox’s Constance Grady explains. This episode was produced by Siona Peterous and Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Amanda Lewellyn and Amina Al-Sadi, engineered by Michael Raphael, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happened yesterday is one 5'2 little blonde wily female attorney and one 79-year-old advice columnrunner Donald Trump was found liable yesterday for sexual abuse and defamation and ordered to pay $5 million to the woman who accused him of both. Some of Donald Trump's defenders responded that he was found liable for sexual abuse, but not for rape. But E. Jean Carroll's lawyer suggested that may be a distinction rather than a difference. So New York law in this area is complicated. I'm not going to take the time to your listeners to try to explain it. We are, though. That's our job.

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It's Today Explained from Vox. Constance Grady is a correspondent for Vox.com. She's been writing about E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit, which starts with an account of an assault here. According to E. Jean Carroll, Trump attacked her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City somewhere between 1994 and 1996. I was coming out and he was coming in. He was standing out and he put his hand like this. So I did not go through the revolving door. He came in, he said, hey, you're that advice lady. And I said, hey, you're that real estate tycoon.

He said, come advise me. I want to buy a present. At the time, she has a daily advice show on cable news. So she's sort of a known figure about town, as is he. Trump tells her that he is shopping for a gift for a girl and he wants her opinion on what he should buy. So they start going around the store. They're joking. They're talking about the things he could maybe buy.

It was such a great moment. So how about the handbags? Oh, no, he doesn't want a handbag. Well, how about a hat? And then eventually they get to the lingerie department. And I am just like, oh, I can dine out forever on this story. We're going to go get lingerie. So then Trump holds up a lace bodysuit and says, try it on.

And E. Jean Carroll says as a joke, oh, no, you try it on. You know, it's your size. It's your color. I used to be a writer at Saturday Night Live. I see an entire sketch of making Donald Trump put this filmy thing over his pants. That is what I'm thinking. I am not thinking, I think it's, I just, I was laughing as I said it. He said, well, you know, he went like this. They go over to the dressing room.

Agent Carroll says that at this point she's still thinking this is just a really funny joke she's going to be telling at every cocktail party she ever goes to. And the minute I was in there, he shut the door and pushed me up against the wall and bang, bang my head on the wall and kissed me. I just, it was so shocking. And that was when it turned serious. I realized that this was, this realized that this was a fight. She has said that he penetrated her vaginally with his fingers. He, to use the Trump phrase, grabbed her by the pussy. And then she says that he penetrated her with his genitals. So she's accusing him of rape. Does she then report the rape to the police? Who does she tell? E. Jean Carroll tells two of her friends about the attack around the time that it happens. At this point, she is not using the word rape herself. One of them says he raped you.

She tells her to go to the police, offers to go with her. And the other friend says, you know what, forget it. He is extremely litigious. He will bury you in lawyers. He will make your life miserable. Just pretend that this never happened. And at this point in time, that is the friend that E. Jean Carroll listens to. When do E. Jean Carroll's accusations against Trump first become public knowledge? When does she say something publicly. E. Jean Carroll first comes forward with her accusations about Trump in 2019. She writes a memoir. It's titled, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal. Among other things, it describes her encounter with a number of what she calls hideous men whom she accuses of some form or other of misconduct. The allegations against Trump are the most damning and they're also the most explosive. They're immediately an extremely big deal. She writes about this in her memoir.

She's speaking publicly. How does this, though, end up in court after all those years? And in court, what is E. Jean Carroll accusing Trump of? So this is a little bit of a journey as to how this issue ends up in court. When she first comes forward with her accusations in 2019, Trump responds. He says that she is lying, that he has no idea who she is. One of the things he says is, this is a direct quote, I'll say it with great respect. Number one, she's not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened. Okay. So E. Jean Carroll responds to that by saying, okay, this is calling me a liar, saying that I'm too ugly to assault. This

is defamation. And that's the initial legal claim that she files against Donald Trump in 2019. It's not about the sexual assault. It's about him saying that she lied. So what's important to know here is this is actually not that uncommon of a legal strategy to take when you're accusing someone of sexual assault and you're saying that the crime occurred a number of years ago. Because most sexual assault cases have a statute of limitations, and if that statute has run out, which is the case here, then one thing that a survivor can do after making a public accusation is look at how the alleged attacker responds. So if he denies the allegations, then the survivor can say, you're calling me a liar.

That's damaging my public reputation. And they can take the attacker to court for defamation. And that can be a way of getting some kind of legal acknowledgement of the attack on the record, even if it's too late to bring the attacker up on sexual assault charges. So that's something that we see with, for example, Bill Cosby, who was sued by seven women in a case that was settled in 2019. So all of them had accused him of sexual assault. He had denied it all seven times and all of them ended up suing him for defamation. And one of the issues here is that because of the shame associated with sexual assault in our culture, it's really, really common for survivors to stay silent about an attack for years or decades after it happens. And then if someday they change their minds, they decide they want to come forward, maybe get some form of legal restitution, our system is kind of like, oh, tough, you know, you missed your window.

So the defamation strategy is sort of a workaround, and that is what initially E. Jean Carroll is doing here. Okay, she starts out suing for defamation, but then he's found liable for sexual abuse. How do we get there? So here is where we can see one of the effects of the Me Too movement and the way it really took off in 2017. After that happens, after the accusations against Harvey Weinstein and all of this sort of avalanche of other accusations coming forward, we start to see some efforts from the legal system to address this problem of survivors not having enough time to make their accusations. One of the strategies that lawmakers come up with in New York State is called the Adult Survivors Act. And basically,

what that says is, wow, Me Too is making a lot of people look back at things that have happened to them years and years ago that maybe they didn't have words for at the time that it happened. And now they're saying, oh, I think that might have been sexual assault. And we recognize, you know, this is a big social shift. So we're going to give people a one-time window of one year from November of 2022 to November of 2023 to file a civil case against someone who sexually abused them no matter how long ago the abuse took place. And so as soon as the Adult Survivors Act passes, E. Jean Carroll uses that to file a civil suit against Donald Trump. Got it. And that's how we end up in court in late April. Tell me about the trial. So the trial begins on April 25th. It lasts for two weeks. During those two weeks, E. Jean Carroll testifies over the course of three days. And then her legal team

also calls up 10 additional witnesses. So that is including the two friends she originally told about the assault, an expert witness psychiatrist, and two women who have said that they were also sexually assaulted by Trump in similar ways. The two women who are testifying for E. Jean Carroll here are Lisa Bernbach. So she is another writer. She's the one who told E. Jean Carroll that Trump had raped her and told her to go to the police about it. And then also Carol Martin. Carol Martin, also a writer, also a friend of E. Jean Carroll's. She is the one who told E. Jean Carroll after she'd been attacked to forget about it and not try to fight it in court because Trump would be so litigious. How does Donald Trump react during this trial, this very public trial?

Donald Trump's reaction to this trial is interesting and kind of deeply characteristic of Trump because he's really talking out of both sides of his mouth on this one. He gives an interview during the trial where he says that he is going to come to New York and he's going to confront E. Jean Carroll, and then he does not. He stays in the British Isles opening golf courses. He does not show up at the courthouse. He does not testify. And in fact, his lawyer does not present any case at all to the jury. They do not call any witnesses of their own. So while Trump is not in the courtroom in person, we do see videos of his deposition from last November, and Carroll's

lawyers play this for the jury. And what we see in the deposition video is pretty damning. He reiterates once again that E. Jean Carroll is not his type, and then when he's shown a picture of him standing next to her, he kind of gets her mixed up with his wife at the time, Marla. I don't even know who the woman, let's say, I don't know who, it's Marla. You're saying Marla's in this photo? That's Marla, yeah. That's my wife. Which woman are you pointing to? Here. The person you just pointed to was E.J. Carroll. Who is that? Who is this? He also tells her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, you wouldn't be a choice of mine either. And he kind of doubles down on the Access Hollywood tape. 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 pussy. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. 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 pussy? 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 you consider yourself to be a star? I think you can say that, yeah. So he's really not doing a great job of countering Eugene Carroll's story in this video. And that's partially why her lawyers bring it out. It looks very, very bad for him. And this is something that he seems to be trying to spin for his base. So he posts on his social media network, Truth Social, on May 9th. He says falsely, I was not allowed to speak or defend myself in the courtroom. But that's a lie. He was offered multiple opportunities to testify on his own behalf. In fact, the judge offers him an extension

after the defense has rested their case, saying that he can specially request to open the case back up and testify before the jury begins deliberations. And Trump doesn't do any of that. He is choosing not to testify and lying about it. So that brings us back to the guilty verdict itself. What does it mean for Trump? So one thing that's important to note about this verdict is that it's not a guilty verdict necessarily, right? It's a verdict of liability. So Trump is not being found guilty of criminal charges. He is not going to face jail time.

What he has to do is pay E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages, both compensatory for her pain and suffering after the attack and for harming her reputation due to the defamation. One of the open questions is whether this is going to affect his political career going forward. For a lot of politicians, I think that would not be an open question. I think being found liable for sexual battery in a legal court would be kind of a career killer. But Trump's relationship with his base is so singular, and he has had his political career survive so many scandals before that in this case, I think a lot of people are kind of wondering what's next for him. Does he have $5 million? That's a great question. We do not know that much about Trump's financial situation because

he has kept it so opaque. I was mostly joking. We really don't know. It's very likely, of course, that he will try to tie this up in appeals for as long as possible to hold off paying. Up ahead, Vox's Constance Grady comes back to reflect on a truly surprising fact about the jury in this case. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month.

And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM.

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verdict so far? We're seeing a lot of vindication from E. Jean Carroll's side. She has said that she is very pleased with the results. I'm overwhelmed, overwhelmed with joy and happiness and delight for the women in this country. A lot of her supporters are very happy. Trump himself has responded to say that it is a witch hunt and a hoax and that he still doesn't know who she is. I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. The verdict is a disgrace, a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time. Absolutely a shame. There has also been some mixed emotions I've seen from some people on both sides. People who supported Carol feel on some cases kind of upset that she wasn't vindicated in her accusation of rape.

And people who supported Trump feel vindicated that he's not being called a rapist, but are angry that he was found liable for battery and that he'll have to pay her money at all. We're also seeing some Republicans begin to respond. They are mostly being kind of shifty and not necessarily taking a firm stance here. Why was he found guilty of sexual abuse, but not guilty of rape? Yeah, so the distinction between sexual abuse and rape is kind of fuzzy. It's something that feminists have been increasingly arguing is sort of an archaic distinction. But in New York State, essentially, sexual assault is an unwanted sexual act that is performed without the consent of one party. And rape is specifically sexual intercourse that is performed, let me get the wording completely correct for this because it is a finicky little legal

definition. Okay, yes. In New York State, rape is sexual intercourse that is performed under forcible compulsion. So it's just a slightly more parsimonious definition. We don't know if a juror had difficulty with the specificity of sexual intercourse as opposed to any sex act or whether they didn't necessarily see forcible compulsion, but that is the distinction that is being drawn there. And that is where the jury came down. And why was he found liable instead of being found guilty? Trump is found liable instead of guilty because this is a civil case. So that means that it doesn't come with the threat of jail time.

It means that rather than having to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, you only have to prove something to a preponderance of evidence. There's a lower barrier for entry, essentially, in civil court. And as a result, the potential penalties are much lower. Okay. Okay. We don't know anything about the jury in this case, do we? No, the jury was six men and three women. There are six men on the jury and they still found him liable of sexual abuse. That seems significant to me. Am I being crazy? No, I think you're not wrong to think that that's significant. You know, it's hard to know always how these verdicts will split. I do think that the fact that Trump did get a liability verdict here is a sign of the influence of Me Too on our larger social system. I think that the conversations that we had over the course of

that movement being really, really important and amplified in public discourse really did change how literate a lot of people are about what a woman's response to sexual assault might look like, why she might not scream, and why it might take her years to come forward. What I think this verdict does is it takes away this kind of fig leaf of plausible deniability that Trump is not a sexual predator, right? It's no longer possible for people to say, you know, oh, that's all rumors. It hasn't ever been investigated in a courtroom. That tape was just locker room talk. That's not to say that like everyone's going to be convinced by this verdict, right? I think there are definitely

Trump supporters who are going to find a way to keep believing that he's innocent here, kind of the same way that they found a way to keep believing that he won an election when he hadn't. But I think a useful comparison here might be to Tucker Carlson, right? So, Tucker Carlson was recently fired from Fox News, even though he was hugely powerful and influential there because they were worried about a racist text message he had sent coming to light. And what was kind of interesting in that case is what Tucker Carlson says in the text is not actually that much more racist than most of the things that he heavily implied on his show while it was on the air, like all the time. But the text took away this plausible deniability, this fig leaf

that Tucker Carlson and his supporters were using to pretend that they couldn't even see race, that really they were colorblind. So I think it's possible that this verdict of liability can take that same fig leaf away from Trump. It makes it much harder for people to pretend to believe in his innocence. who plans on running for president in 2024. The Republican voters who matter, I would think, are the Republican voters who lean independent. The voters, the Republicans who didn't want Trump for president in 2020. This would seem to be another nail in the coffin. Yeah, I think that this is going to be really, really hard to weigh out the consequences for Trump politically, in part because we're so far away still from the general election. But one thing that we do know is that while Trump was in office, 61% of voters in one poll said that if he were proven to have engaged in sexual harassment, then he should be impeached

and removed from office. So that does suggest that there are a lot of people who are pretty worried about the idea that Trump may be a sexual predator. And now that he's been found liable for having engaged in sexual assault, which is a much stronger term, that may be changing their minds. On the other hand, the fact that he hasn't been in office for a number of years may have softened people's memories of what the Trump years were like. I think it's really, really hard to know at this point. And we won't have a clear sense of how this has affected Trump until the numbers start to come in. What does this case tell us about how sexual assault and rape are treated in courts? I think that this case makes a good portrait of how we are continuously finding our legal system not very effective at dealing with sexual assault and specifically the way people tend to feel about sexual assault.

You know, it's really very common for people like E. Jean Carroll to look at the way that we treat survivors, the way that we treat women who come forward with accusations of sexual violence against powerful men and say, no, I don't want to put myself through that. That looks terrible. And then maybe a few years later, they might see that their attacker has gone on to get more power, that he has maybe continued to attack other women in the same way that he has attacked them. And they might say, oh, actually, I do want to come forward. I do think that it's my responsibility in a way to make a statement now to see if I can stop this person. And if they do make that choice, our legal system is really not set up to allow them to do that.

Something like the Adult Survivors Act, which is what E. Jean Carroll used to sue Trump, that's really, really a stopgap. It's a one-time, one-year window that is not going to be any help to anyone after November of this year. So I think that this trial is a demonstration of the ways that our court system is not set up for the emotional reality of how people tend to respond to sexual violence and is a demonstration of the ways that we know

that our court system is not really set up for this and the inadequacy of our current attempts to fix it. That was Constance Grady. You can find her writing about this case and so much more at Vox.com. Today's episode was produced by Siona Petros and Avishai Artsy. It was edited by Matthew Collette and fact-checked by Laura Bullard, with some help from Amanda Llewellyn and Amina El-Sadi. It was engineered by Michael Rayfield.

I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.