MANHATTAN (CN) — Donald Trump’s attorneys rested their cross-examination of magazine writer E. Jean Carroll on Thursday morning with his defense team’s assertion that her reputation ultimately was not damaged by the former president because she's become a widely recognized name and celebrated writer since he branded her a liar and a “whackjob.”
“I’m more well-known, and I'm hated by a lot more people," Carroll on cross-examination said of her life after bringing a sexual assault accusation against the former president, then facing a vicious online backlash.
Carroll, whose long-running "Ask E. Jean" column appeared in Elle magazine from 1993 through 2019, says Trump raped her in early 1996 in a fitting room at New York City’s famed Bergdorf Goodman department store, after the two recognized each other and Trump asked her to help him pick out a gift for a woman.
Trump’s denials of the story, first made public in an excerpt of Carroll’s 2019 book “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal,” published in New York Magazine’s The Cut, prompted the civil defamation lawsuit by Carroll filed the same year.
Standing trial four years later to determine how much the former president will pay in damages for defaming her, Trump’s attorneys grilled Carroll on cross-examination whether her public standing had been harmed or upgraded after coming forward with accusations of sexual assault against him.
“Your reputation, in many ways, is better today, isn’t it, Ms. Carroll?” Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba asked at the conclusion of her cross-examination questions.
“No, my status was lowered,” Carroll responded. “I’m partaking in this trial to bring my old reputation and status back.”
“So you sued Donald Trump to bring your old reputation back,” Habba snapped back. “Yeah,” Carroll affirmed.
Carroll testified her Twitter account had around 10,500 followers in 2017, and now has more than 282,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter.
“Would you call yourself a success on social media?” Trump’s lawyer asked Carroll.
“No, I’d call myself mediocre on social media,” the 80-year-old writer responded.
Earlier during cross-examination, Habba probed Carroll's old Tweets with feigned bewilderment at the prurient subject matter covered by the sex and relationship advice columnist.
Habba recited one of Carroll’s Twitter posts back to her: “What CAN be done about the penis? It gets large when you wanted it small, and stays small when you want it large.”
“Those were your words, correct?” the New Jersey-based lawyer asked. “And you posted them on a public social media account?”
“It’s a philosophical question," Carroll explained confidently. “Sometimes a woman doesn’t feel like making love and the man wants to,” she said, quipping that sometimes the reverse is true.
“You discussed penises?" Habba asked in feigned shock. "Yes, we discussed penises," Carroll replied matter-of-factly.
Later, Habba pulled up an old tweet of Carroll’s that read, “Any ideas on how to dominate a man?” and included a screengrab from the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” showing Leonardo DiCaprio on his hands and knees with Margot Robbie’s red high heel shoes pressed into his face.
Later on Thursday, Ashlee Humphreys, a professor of marketing and communications at Northwestern University, testified she concluded Trump's June 2019 statements "did have an impact on Ms. Carroll’s reputation, particularly as a journalist."
She estimated final damages for a campaign to repair Carroll’s reputation to be between $7.2 million and $12.1 million.
Humphreys testified in Carroll’s first trial against Trump that repairing damage to her name could cost up to $2.7 million.
The jury in Carroll's first trial ultimately found that Carroll did not prove Trump raped her, the most severe possible element under the battery count, but found that he did sexually abuse her, and awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory damages plus $20,000 in punitive damages.
On the defamation count, jurors decided Trump had to pay $1.7 million in damages for a reputation repair program plus $1 million in other damages.
Carroll testified during her second trial that she received “scores and scores” of hostile emails and social media messages daily — which began “instantaneously” following Trump’s denials in June 2019 and continue to the present — ranging from comments on her appearance, calling her “ugly, scrawny, hag,” to violent threats of rape and murder.
Trump, 77, continues to deny having ever met Carroll or sexually assaulting her. He insists a 1987 photo of them together with their respective spouses at a Saturday Night Live party doesn’t qualify as proof of having met her because it was a fleeting moment during an event.
Kaplan already found Trump liable on Carroll’s defamation claims in pretrial summary judgment, so the jury trial in the Southern District of New York will be to determine how much he owes her in damages.
The nine-person jury is hearing evidence pertaining to $10 million in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages requested by Carroll.
“I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me, and I wrote about it; he lied and he said it never happened,” Carroll said Wednesday when she began her direct testimony. “He shattered my reputation,” he said.
Trump has made statements declaring his intent to testify in his own defense when the trial resumes next week.
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