The E.Jean Carroll situation is complicated, so I’ll try to go through the broad strokes. Back in the 1990s, Donald Trump raped Carroll in Bergdorf Goodman. Carroll did not tell her story publicly until the first Trump term. At first, she simply told her story via New York Magazine, she didn’t sue Trump or ask to file charges or anything. Well, Trump couldn’t let it go. He began defaming her in interviews and on social media. So in late 2019, Carroll sued him for defamation. Then, in 2022, Carroll sued him again, this time for battery through the Adult Survivors Act. Both civil cases staggered their way through the courts. Carroll ended up winning both cases, with the courts finding that Trump not only assaulted her, but defamed her repeatedly. In one case, Carroll was awarded $5.6 million. In the other, she was awarded damages of $83.3 million. Once Trump “won” the election in 2024, he tried to find some way to reverse the rulings and avoid paying out. Last December, he even ordered the Department of Justice to investigate Carroll for perjury. While the $83.3 million payout is still being held up, a court ordered Trump to pay Carroll the $5.6 million judgment. He finally wired the money to her last week.

President Trump has paid the writer E. Jean Carroll $5.6 million that was owed to her as a result of a jury’s finding that he was liable for sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s and then defaming her, federal court records show.

The money, which had been held in escrow while Mr. Trump appealed the 2023 jury award, was disbursed to Ms. Carroll last week, according to a note added to the online court docket in the case on Tuesday.

The payment came after the U.S. Supreme Court declined the president’s latest attempt to appeal the verdict, which prompted the judge overseeing the case to order that the money be released to Ms. Carroll.

Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that she and her client were “pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.”

The White House press office referred a request for comment to Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers. Aaron Harison, a spokesman for the legal team representing Mr. Trump in the matter, said in a statement that “the American people stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll hoaxes.”

[From The NY Times]

I’m still in awe of E. Jean’s bravery. I have been for years – she really stood up to this monster and told her story and never backed down, even in the bloated orange face of fascism. She’s seeing it through to the bitter end. And it says something about the strength of her case that all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men couldn’t figure out a way to delegitimize Carroll or successfully appeal her legal victories.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.