Who is E. Jean Carroll? The journalist is known for her famed advice column in ‘Elle’ and extensive magazine profiles, and now, she’s suing Donald Trump for defamation four months after accusing him of sexual assault.
UPDATE (11/4/2019, 3:00 p.m. ET) E. Jean Carroll is suing Donald Trump for defamation after he called her a “liar” for her sexual assault allegations against him. “I am filing this lawsuit for every woman who’s been pinched, prodded, cornered, felt-up, pushed against a wall, grabbed, groped, assaulted, and has spoken up only to be shamed, demeaned, disgraced, passed over for promotions, fired and forgotten,” she said in a statement. “While I can no longer hold Donald Trump accountable for assaulting me more than 20 years ago, I can hold him accountable for lying about it and I fully intent to do so.” In her lawsuit, Carroll asks for Trump to retract his statements and pay her compensatory and punitive damages. “Trump knew that these statements were false; at a bare minimum, he acted with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity,” Carroll’s complaint read, according to NBC News. “[The statements] inflicted emotional pain and suffering, they damaged her reputation and they caused substantial professional harm.”
UPDATE (6/24/2019, 10:00 p.m. ET): E. Jean Carroll, 75, would “consider” filing a complaint and working with the New York police department in a criminal investigation after she accused Donald Trump, 73, of assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room 23 years ago. She admitted this during an interview with CNN on June 24, which The Guardian transcribed. On June 22, New York Mayor Bill de Blaiso told reporters that the NYPD would look into Carroll’s allegations and “find out the truth” if the columnist filed a complaint. Meanwhile, Trump has denied Carroll’s assault accusations.
ORIGINAL STORY: E. Jean Carroll, 75, posed on the cover of New York Magazine for its June 24-July 7 issue, accompanied by a bold statement: “This is what I was wearing 23 years ago when Donald Trump attacked me in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.” Pulling an excerpt from her upcoming book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, the magazine published Carroll’s account of her run-in with the POTUS at a Bergdorf Goodman store that allegedly ended in sexual assault more than two decades ago. Carroll claimed that Trump needed help picking out lingerie as a present, which eventually led the real estate tycoon to suggest that the writer try on a lace bodysuit. Carroll joked that Trump should try on the piece instead, and they later entered a dressing room together.
The story took a sharp turn once inside the dressing room, as the columnist accused Trump of shoving her against a wall, pulling down her tights and “forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.” While a senior White House official denied these allegations, blaming the story on an attempt “to make the President look bad,” the excerpt’s prose is reflective of a veteran writer. Here’s what you should know about the columnist who waited over 20 years to tell her side of the story in vivid detail.
1. Carroll is renown for her “Ask E. Jean” column in Elle. The magazine has run the column since 1993! The successful column paved the way for a television show, Ask E, which aired between 1994 and 1996.
2. Carroll is an accomplished journalist. She boasts many bylines in publications like Playboy, Esquire, and Outside — and Carroll still found time to author five books. In addition to her upcoming book (to be released on July 2), Carroll wrote the following works: Female Difficulties: Sorority Sisters, Rodeo Queens, Frigid Women, Smut Stars, and Other Modern Girls, A Dog in Heat Is a Hot Dog and Other Rules to Live By, Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson and Mr. Right, Right Now.
3. She wrote for Saturday Night Live. Carroll joined the late night comedic sketch show’s writing team between 1986 and 1987.
4. Carroll accused former CBS chief Les Moonves of alleged assault as well. Carroll accused Moonves (who was the president of CBS Entertainment at the time) of attempting to grope her in an elevator, after she interviewed him for an Esquire profile in the late ’90s. Moonves “emphatically” denied this.
5. She was crowned Miss Cheerleader USA in 1964. Carroll was a cheerleader at Indiana University, and represented her school while competing for the prestigious title.