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It was a real Roy Cohn move.
Cohn was the lawyer who gave Trump the advice he continues to adhere to. Cohn, who was Senator Joseph McCarthy’s lawyer during the “red scare” communist blacklist era of the 1950s, told Trump, in the context of a 1973 DOJ investigation into his racially discriminatory practices as a landlord, “You might be guilty; it doesn’t matter. Go after the Justice Department. Don’t ever admit guilt.’”
The Trumps discriminated against Black applicants for their rental properties. Some of their employees had even confessed. But under Cohn’s tutelage, Trump pushed back, refused to settle, and filed a countersuit, delaying judgment against his company for a couple of extra years. “Just deny everything and fight,” Cohn told him. He did. He still does.
It took the persistence and the patience of E. Jean Carroll to show the world that a loser is just a loser.
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In her 2019 book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, Carroll discussed publicly, for the first time, that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room years earlier. Trump, of course, denied it, saying she wasn’t his type—despite her uncanny resemblance to his second wife, Marla Maples (Trump even confused Carroll with Maples when he was shown a photo during a deposition). Carroll sued for defamation, not once, but twice when Trump repeated the defamation on national television. As we all know, juries found in Carroll’s favor, not once, but twice, returning a $5 million verdict that the Supreme Court let stand today and an $83.3 million dollar verdict that is still on appeal.
If you feel like you’ve got déjà vu right now—didn’t you already tell us this Joyce?—you’re right. The Supreme Court just told Trump no for the second time in the $5 million case. Once was not enough for him. After the verdict was affirmed on appeal by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump asked the Supreme Court to reverse it. The Court rejected his appeal in June. I wrote about that here.
Then, Trump took another step, permitted by Supreme Court rules, asking them to reconsider telling him no. These motions never end well for litigants. The Court hasn’t granted one and changed its decision since the 1950s, although it did change the wording in the judgment in one case during the 1960s. Trump wasn’t going to win here, and he knew it. But in true Roy Cohn fashion, he blustered on, trying to keep the money out of E. Jean’s hands for as long as possible. Unfortunately for him, that didn’t work out. He had already paid the money into a court fund, and the trial judge ordered the clerk to pay it out to Carroll, whose lawyer represented that they would invest it until the Court told Trump no again.
The Court has done that, and it’s really over now. The money is hers. Far more important to Carroll, undoubtedly, is that the jury’s verdict, finding that Trump sexually assaulted her and then defamed her by calling her a liar, is affirmed. For all time. A jury in a civil case found Trump assaulted Carroll, even if our society wasn’t advanced enough at the time it happened for her to feel like she could press criminal charges without destroying her livelihood as a writer and her future security.
It’s ironic, that bit. At trial, Trump’s lawyers, including the current Attorney General of the United States, Todd Blanche, said she shouldn’t be believed because she didn’t come forward for so long. He said that even though she told two friends, who testified, about it when it happened. Carroll lost her long-time job as an advice columnist at Elle Magazine after the book came out. Her contract was cut short and she was fired. They said it wasn’t about Trump, but none of us are naive anymore. We remember catch and kill.
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Women in this country and other parts of the world come forward at great personal expense to make allegations about rich and powerful men. E. Jean Carroll understands that just about as well as anyone, and she decided to stick the landing, no matter how much public derision and name-calling she had to endure from the President of the United States and his bully corner.
Carroll’s other case, the one where the jury awarded her $83 million because Trump defamed her again the evening after the jury returned the $5 million verdict, is still pending at the Supreme Court. He’s arguing a variant of presidential immunity. The Court could either reject the case out of hand like it did here, or agree to hear it and schedule it for briefing next term.
But Carroll’s story doesn’t end with her lawsuits. She has a larger legacy.
Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and survivors are still with us. Waiting. Watching. Some of them, like Virginia Giuffre, who is now deceased, came forward publicly. Others told some of their story to law enforcement. Still others, afraid for themselves and their families, are holding off, at least for now, until they see what happens. That’s not because they aren’t telling the truth. That’s not because they don’t have more truths to tell about powerful men. As Carroll’s experience demonstrates, it’s because we still seem to live in a world where nothing good happens to women who come forward.
We say we believe the women. But we still don’t, at least, not everyone does. Donald Trump and his ilk still believe in some version of Roy Cohn’s advice. Deny. Lie. Delay. Bully. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, victimized women are damaged further and revictimized.
Remind anyone who tries to diminish victims who don’t come forward of this. It’s not easy thing to come forward right after you’ve been traumatized by the commission of a sexual crime against you. It’s more difficult when the perpetrators are powerful, threatening figures. Remind anyone who criticizes victims that even though Congress took the extraordinary step of passing a law that requires the Justice Department—Donald Trump’s Justice Department—to turn over the Epstein Files, that hasn’t happened. Todd Blanche is still protecting the rich and powerful in Epstein’s orbit, and although we don’t know for certain whether or how complicit he is in the abuse of girls and women, that includes Donald Trump. Is it any wonder women don’t come forward when they see others’ courageous testimony being pushed aside?
I hope Carroll inspires a generation of women who have been victimized to come forward. I hope she inspires Congress and state legislatures to pass needed laws, empowers law enforcement leaders and communities to abandon outmoded attitudes that question and blame victims, and helps us all move forward. That would be a fitting legacy for her courage.
But for now, it’s enough that Donald Trump has lost and has nowhere else to go. Just imagine him in that position. It’s all because an 82-year-old woman who Trump said wasn’t “his type” and tried to marginalize decided she’d had enough and decided to fight back.
Thank you, E. Jean Carroll, for being the hero we all need right now. Don’t give up.
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