Examining the Ongoing Sexual Assault Case in Hollywood Life
Former President Donald Trump and writer E. Jean Carroll have been in a legal battle since November 2019, when Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump following his public denials of her sexual assault allegations.
Trump then appealed the 2023 civil jury verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing Carroll decades ago in a department store and defaming her in 2022 by calling her allegations a “con job.” In a separate case, a jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in January for Trump’s defamatory statements made in 2019, a verdict he also appealed.
The legal battle continued as Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, urged an appeals court to overturn the decision requiring Trump to pay $5 million to Carroll. Trump, 78, maintained he never assaulted Carroll, 80.
On Sept. 6, Trump appeared in a New York City courtroom for the proceedings, his first appearance after missing the trial and later blaming his lawyers for the loss.
Learn more about the ongoing Trump-Carroll legal battle, including a detailed timeline, here.
Timeline
1990s
- Around 1996: Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, alleges that Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City.
2019
- June 21, 2019: Carroll publicly accuses Trump of sexual assault in her book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, published in New York Magazine. Trump denies the allegations, stating he had never met Carroll and that she was “not his type.”
- November 4, 2019: Carroll files a defamation lawsuit against Trump in New York state court, claiming his statements denying her allegations damaged her reputation.
2020
- September 8, 2020: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) intervenes in the defamation case, arguing that Trump was acting in his official capacity as President when he made the statements about Carroll. (The move, if successful, would have shifted the case to federal court and potentially resulted in its dismissal.)