Carroll promises to do 'something good' with a fortune Trump has won
As soon as E. Jean Carroll heard the verdict on Friday – $83.3 million in defamation damages against Donald J. Trump – a world of possibilities opened up for her: How can I use the money?
The amount far eclipsed the $5 million awarded to her by a jury last spring in another lawsuit against Mr. Trump. It could be years before she sees the money, as Mr. Trump has said he will appeal, but she is already considering how she might use the money once she gets it.
“I'm not going to waste a dime of this,” she said. “We're going to do something good with it.”
Figuring that out will take some time, she added. But she will splurge on one luxury, she said: for her Great Pyrenees and her pit bull. “I'm going to be able to buy some premium dog food now,” she said.
Ms. Carroll, who appeared relaxed and happy at her law office on Saturday, spoke in her first interview since the Manhattan jury award a day earlier in her favor.
Ms. Carroll, 80, has sued Mr. Trump, 77, for defamation after he called her a liar in June 2019, when she publicly accused him for the first time: in a magazine article, of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman locker room decades earlier. Mr. Trump continued to attack Ms. Carroll, in posts on his Truth Social website that lasted until the trial, as well as at news conferences and during the campaign trial.
After Friday's verdict, Mr. Trump launched a new attack on social media: “Our justice system is out of control and is being used as a political weapon.” But he avoided criticizing Ms. Carroll, a silence that spoke volumes. Ms. Carroll said she was not ready to assume the former president was done with her.
“I can't possibly guess what Donald Trump will ever do or not do,” she said. “I can't guess.”
When told on Saturday that Ms. Carroll would hold out and hoped to do good with the money, one of Mr. Trump's lawyers, Alina Habba, referred a reporter to what she said late Friday: “We didn't win today — but we will win. .”
Ms Carroll said it was only on Saturday morning that she finally started to enjoy what was happening. “It was so overwhelming yesterday,” she said. “I couldn't feel the elation.”
“This morning, around eight or nine o'clock, when I had my first cup of tea, I really felt calm enough to feel what we had achieved.”
Ms Carroll said the verdict was a victory for women above all.
“This victory, more than anything else, on this day, when we needed it most – after losing the rights over our own bodies in many states – we staked our flag in the ground. Women won this one. I think this bodes well for the future.”
Ms. Carroll praised the attorneys who have litigated her cases for more than four years, resulting in jury awards totaling nearly $90 million. Her lead lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, suggested that Trump might now think more carefully about the risks of new attacks on Ms. Carroll.
“He cares about money,” Ms. Kaplan said. “And this is a lot of money for Donald Trump. And I don't think he wants another judgment for the same amount.”
Ms. Carroll said that as the trial approached, she felt anxious at the prospect of confronting the man she had accused of assaulting her decades earlier. Her decision to publicly accuse him led to years of his insults and taunts; he called her a liar and said he didn't know her.
“I was terrified – for the next few weeks,” Ms Carroll said. But when she began testifying on Jan. 16, with Mr. Trump at the defense table, she said she felt emboldened. “He's not for me,” she said.
She remembered the Emperor's fable: “If you have actually looked at the man, he is just a man without clothes,” she said. “It's the people around him who give him the power.”
It took jurors less than three hours of deliberation Friday to take away some of that power. The verdict included $18.3 million in compensation to Ms. Carroll for her ordeal and $65 million in damages after the jury found that Mr. Trump had acted maliciously.
In 2018, Ms. Carroll testified at trial that she made about $50,000 a year writing freelance articles.
She said that as she testified, she occasionally looked at Mr. Trump, who did not look back. She said answering her lawyer's questions about Mr. Trump was satisfying. “I knew he heard me,” Mrs. Carroll added.
She said she felt a special bond with the seven men and two women who formed the anonymous jury during the trial and who had not given any indication during the trial about how they viewed the case.
“I felt like they were my brothers and sisters on that jury,” Ms. Carroll said. “They were just like me. They were New Yorkers.”
Shawn G. Crowley, another of her lawyers, said that after the verdict, jurors walked past their table as they left the courtroom, and at least three of them smiled and nodded at Ms. Carroll.
As Ms. Carroll and her lawyers defend their sentences on appeal and continue to fight to obtain the full verdict, she said she felt inspired to use the money to make real change.
“I can't say yet which ones they are. We will all talk and come up with a great plan.”
But, she said, her own future — and that of her pets — was secure.
“You know, me and the dogs are getting along just fine in our cabin,” she said, adding, “but we're going to do something great with this money.”
Kate Christobek And Maria Kramer reporting contributed.