Why I Don't Believe E. Jean Carroll

She Says Trump Raped Her in a Department Store

I think of E. Jean Carroll as the octogenarian version of the quirky Sex in the City character, Carrie Bradshaw. Like Carrie Bradshaw, E. Jean Carroll made a living by trolling the upscale haunts of the Manhattan glitterati and writing about boy-girl relationships. In Carrie’s case, she wrote a column, mostly mourning her lack of success in finding true love. E. Jean Carroll dispensed relationship advice in Elle and wrote for other pillars of American letters, including Rolling Stone and Playboy. Carrie Bradshaw was a cute, harmless, lovesick girl in designer clothes and very expensive high heels.

E. Jean Carroll is a much more puzzling person.

Carroll lives in a small cabin in upstate New York called “The Mouse House.” Apparently, her tiny home is vermin infested and she likes that. She lives in the woods, where she paints rocks blue for decorative effect. She is an animal lover and has given her various pets names for sexual body parts. She recently appeared on Anderson Cooper and visibly started to hit on him in an interview, purring that he was “fascinating to talk to” after having announced that “some people find rape sexy…think of the fantasies.” Never mind that Mr. Anderson is gay. He was so alarmed by her appearance, he switched abruptly to a commercial. Here is a clip of her. Thirty seconds of yuck. If Carroll were a man, they’d call her Mr. Creepy McCreeper.

In 2019, Carroll wrote an article in the New York Magazine that Donald Trump raped her in a dressing room at a posh Manhattan department store known as Bergdorf-Goodman back in the 1990s. Bergdorf’s is a tony Midtown Manhattan destination frequented by well-heeled women of leisure.  Despite the fact that rape is generally considered a traumatic event, Carroll could not remember exactly when this major event happened—not even the year. I know where I was when John F. Kennedy was shot, when John Lennon was shot, and when the Twin Towers fell. I can remember the moment I got laid off from a good job in Texas. I remember where I was when I heard my mother had passed away. However, E. Jean Carroll has no clear recollection when this rape occurred. Well, we did get the decade—it was in the 1990s.

Without naming names, Carroll put her accusation in writing and got it published. She described her attacker as a Manhattan real-estate mogul. Trump came back stating about her, “I’ve never met this person in my life.” He added that the event she described never happened and, besides, she wasn’t his type.

This is the whole basis of the first multimillion dollar award. She accused a Manhattan celebrity billionaire of raping her, and Trump said he did not know her. That was the defamation. Or maybe the defamation was when Trump said she wasn’t his type. At any rate, accusing Trump of rape was not a problem, but Trump’s statements landed him in hot water. In late 2019, Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump because his response caused her emotional pain and damaged her reputation.

There are lots of legal angles to this case—it’s like a fun house with those weird mirrors. Laws were changed which facilitated the case. That involves New York passing the 2022 Adult Survivors’ Act, which rolled back statute of limitations laws on sexual attack. Some say the law was changed specifically to enable Carroll to pursue Trump, something New York Governor Kathy Hochul denies. Some have implicated the Lincoln Project (a Republican Never-Trump organization) for getting involved. Then there was Trump’s appeal that since the accusation was made against him while he was President of the United States (POTUS), the suit had to be directed against the U.S. government and not him as a private citizen. (That failed.)

In 2022, Carroll decided to pursue the rape allegations in civil court, where you only have to prove your case by a preponderance of the evidence, defined as 51%. Carroll went to civil rather than criminal court. In a criminal case, you have to prove your case “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Civil court can only impose monetary penalties and it cannot convict a person of a crime—but it can get money and you only have to show that there is at least a 51% chance that your allegations are true.

The American Future Republic (AFR) organization provided funds to back Carroll’s court case because, despite her long writing career, she did not have the cash to pursue the civil case of sexual assault. AFR is a nonprofit group which gets a lot of its funding from a guy named Reid Hoffman, who you may know better for one of his products, LinkedIn. No surprise, Hoffman is also a major Democrat donor, so his sudden appearance with suitcase full of cash for the Carroll case raised eyebrows. Roberta Kaplan was Carroll’s attorney, and she had to disclose to the Trump legal team that Reid Hoffman was funding the case. Trump rightly raised two objections:

• Hoffman’s clear partisan bias indicated he was pursuing the case for political reasons.

• Carroll had previously testified that no one was helping her with legal bills.

Both basically came to nothing, but Trump does not seem to have good luck in court cases filed in Democrat-run cities like Washington, D.C., or New York.

You probably already know that Carroll won both cases (the 2019 defamation and the 2023 sexual assault case). The first one, defamation, got her $5M and the next got her $18.3M for compensatory damages ($11M for harm to her reputation and $7.3M for emotional damage) with $65M in punitive damages. Carroll’s victory was celebrated on the mainstream media. You never saw a more giggly, jubilant, happy rape victim in your life. She went on TV and practically kissed Rachel Maddow, promising to buy her a villa in France or something equally stupid.

I don’t believe E. Jean Carroll.

Rather than take apart the whole case—which can be done and has been done by better legal minds than mine—I want to share the main stumbling block.

This happened in the 1990s (Carroll is pretty sure of the decade) and Trump was a recognizable celebrity; Carroll was well known as a writer but not a celebrity on the order of Trump. Carroll said on this unspecified day, she “bumped into” Donald Trump at Bergdorf Goodman. They conversed and Trump said he was there to buy a present for a lady friend, specifically lingerie. For some reason, this led them both to go to a dressing room together.

HERE IS WHY I DON’T BELIEVE THIS.

It’s not a legal argument. It’s an observation of human nature. Donald Trump does not do his own shopping. Furthermore, he does not wander around fecklessly in the middle of the day. He does not pass time by striking up conversations with random women in a department store. Trump has always been a busy man. His life is a series of appointments, drivers, chauffeurs, and professional assistants.

At the time this was alleged to have happened, Trump had a very active social life that mainly involved chic clubs, exclusive parties, and super-models. He would not have been strolling through a department store hoping to strike up a conversation with a woman older than he was.

The very wealthy among us—and Trump in the 1990s was one of the richest men in Manhattan (which is saying something)—do not shop. In fact, most alpha males detest shopping and offload that task on wives, mothers, daughters, assistants, or anyone they can find. Wealthy alpha males engage the services of professional shoppers to buy their gifts. If they don’t have a personal shopper on the payroll, they surely have an assistant, a secretary, an administrator, or even an intern.

Even if this wealthy alpha male had a more hands-on approach, at most, he would call the store and ask for merchandise to be brought to him (many upscale stores offer this service). Chances are if a guy like Trump wanted to see some potential girlfriend lingerie, the store would rush out numerous items to Trump’s office so he could make a selection. Even then, I suspect that most busy male executives would let their personal shoppers or assistants make the selections.

Donald Trump does not do his own shopping. There are no other recorded sightings or stories of Trump roaming around a department store in the middle of a workday. Trump was not routinely seen in Bergdorf’s or Macy’s or even Tiffany’s, which is closest to Trump Tower. Trump is a workaholic who leads a highly scheduled life; he is busy, and he is used to having people assist him. He was not out looking for a gift.

The only time Trump would do his own shopping is if he was buying real estate, not underwear. People do not get to be rich real estate developers or businessmen by wasting the middle of the day.

But you know who is out at a luxury department store in the middle of the day? Rich women. Writers. People who are not celebrities. People wasting their time. Tourists. All of the things Trump is not and never will be.

There are lots of other pieces of evidence to torpedo the case—but this one observation does it for me. The rich are different, and Trump is in a class by himself. He doesn’t do things the way we do.

(Of course, there are hundreds of other flaws to her story—but to me this is the most telling.)

Trump has posted a $92M bond which is a requirement to appeal the case.