A History of E. Jean Carroll’s Legal Battle with President Donald Trump

NEW YORK (AP) — Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll has been fighting President Donald Trump in court for…

NEW YORK (AP) — Former columnist E. Jean Carroll has been fighting President Donald Trump in court for nearly seven years over his allegation that he sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of a posh Manhattan department store in 1996.

The fight went mostly in Carroll’s favor, with one jury finding Trump responsible for his attack and a second awarding him tens of millions of dollars in damages for Trump’s public attacks on his credibility.

But Trump’s Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether Carroll lied under oath during the civil trial, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation. The investigation is related to things Carroll said during a deposition when asked who was paying his legal fees.

Here’s a look at the history of the legal battle between Carroll and Trump.

Carroll’s allegations and Trump’s denials

Carroll first went public with her story of sexual assault by Trump in June 2019, when an excerpt from her soon-to-be-released memoir “Why Do We Need Men?” was published in New York magazine.

In the book, she describes running into Trump while shopping at Bergdorf Goodman, flirting with him, and then physically fighting him after he sexually assaulted her in a dressing room.

These claims drew angry denials from Trump.

“I have never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book – which should be sold in the fiction section,” he said in a statement.

“First, she’s not my type. Second, this never happened,” he said in another statement.

Carroll sues Trump for defamation

In 2019, Carroll filed a defamation suit against Trump, claiming that her claims that she made up the story had “tarnished her integrity, honesty and dignity – all in the national press.”

That lawsuit ended up bogged down for years over the legal question of whether, by denying the allegations, Trump had fulfilled his duties as president. Trump claimed that as a federal employee doing his job, he was immune from a defamation suit.

At the time Carroll filed the complaint, the law prohibited her from suing him for alleged sexual assault because many years had passed.

New York changes the law

In 2022, New York State changed its laws to give survivors of sexual abuse another chance to sue for attacks that occurred in the distant past. Carroll was one of the first people to take advantage, filing a new lawsuit against Trump, alleging he raped her. She also filed a complaint about what he said about her after she left the White House.

This trial moved more quickly through the courts. The trial took place in New York in 2023.

Trump chose not to attend, letting his lawyers argue his case on his behalf.

The jury concluded that although Carroll did not prove she had been raped, under New York’s definition of that crime, Trump had sexually assaulted her. It also found that he had made false statements about her that damaged her reputation. Jurors awarded Carroll $5 million.

A second trial

A few months later, in January 2024, a federal judge held a second trial to determine whether other things Trump had said about Carroll were defamatory.

His objective was narrow. Since a jury had already concluded that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll, the testimony was limited to the severity of the damage to Carroll’s reputation by his comments attacking his credibility and denying the alleged attack.

This time, Trump attended the proceedings and testified for about three minutes.

“She said something that I considered to be a false accusation,” he told the jury, later adding, “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and, frankly, the presidency.” »

Carroll testified that she faced a flood of death threats after Trump repeatedly attacked her story.

The new jury again sided with Carroll, awarding him more than $83 million in damages.

The calls continue

Carroll has yet to receive the money while Trump’s appeals of both verdicts have gone to court.

Ruling on one of those appeals, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit also considered whether Carroll had been honest about who was paying for his legal representation.

Trump’s lawyers had accused Carroll of hiding the fact that his lawyers received money from an organization backed by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. The justices ruled there was no evidence to suggest Carroll was involved in that financing deal or deliberately lied about it when asked during a 2020 deposition whether anyone paid her legal fees.

“This showed that Ms Carroll was simply not involved in the question of who was or was not funding her legal costs,” the appeal court said.

An attorney for Carroll declined to comment Thursday through a spokesperson.

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Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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