Background reading:

• “The False Tropes About Rape We Must Destroy” — Amy L. Bernstein
• LISTEN: “Fifteen Minutes of Feminism—The Trump Indictments: Unpacking the E. Jean Carroll Litigation (with Moira Donegan) (May 2023)

Transcript:

00:00:00 Michele Goodwin:

Welcome to On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine, a show where we report, rebel, and you know we tell it just like it is. On our show, we center your concerns about rebuilding our nation and advancing the promise of equality. So join me as we tackle the most compelling issues of our times. On our show, history matters, we examine the past as we think about the future. And right now, there is so much to contend within our nation. We’ve just finished a contentious Supreme court term. National disasters have struck leading to the loss of life from Texas to Mississippi. There are the ICE raids and the detention of people who are lawful residents. And just very recently, there’s the Big Beautiful bill, which places important programs on the chopping block. But there’s hope to be found in many places, including in the wisdom and the courage and tenacity of the women who took on Trump and won. 

E. Jean Carroll and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan made headlines in 2023 and again in 2024 for winning a significant legal battle against Donald Trump with a jury finding him liable of sexual abuse and defamation. E. Jean Carroll was awarded $5,000,000.  Now this particular action, and here I’m quoting from a judicial order, “this particular action dating back to November 2022 sought damages for sexual assault under the then newly enacted New York Adult Survivors Act and for defamation by a statement mister Trump made in October 2022.” E. Jean was later awarded $83.3 million in damages. Now prior to that $83,000,000 ruling, a district court judge in the case issued an order that stated the following. “Mr. Trump is precluded from offering any testimony, evidence, or argument suggesting or implying that he did not sexually assault Ms. Carroll, that she fabricated her account of the assault, or that she had any motive to do so.” 

Listeners, I could not be more pleased than to be joined by E. Jean Carroll, whose new book, Not My Type: One Woman Versus a President. It’s a bold, humorous, and poignant book. You have to pick it up and read it. And I’m also pleased to be joined by Roberta or Robbie Kaplan, who’s E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer, whose masterful litigation has taken down the Nazis and harmful discriminatory legislation in The United States. Listeners, sit back and take a very close listen.

E. Jean, congratulations on winning your appeal. It’s been a long road to get here. I’m wondering about what you’re feeling in the wake of actually having taken on the president and winning?

00:03:01 E. Jean Carroll:

Well, professor, every day, I get a little happier. I get just a smooch little bit happier, because, at the time, it was so much happiness and such glee and such love for Robbie and the Carroll team and the jury and the judge, that I was bursting, and I actually couldn’t feel happy, because I was feeling so happy, I couldn’t. So, now, I’m in the process…now I feel….I’m grabbing joy every single day.

00:03:35 Michele Goodwin:

That’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to grab joy.

00:03:37 E. Jean Carroll:

We got to grab joy, because our great victory, Robbie Kaplan, and see, I’m looking right at her on this fabulous podcast. I’m looking at you, professor. You both know the critical condition the country is in. Robbie and I are here to show you he can be beaten. He can be beaten. I’m an old, 81-year-old woman, and we beat him twice. It can be done, so that also makes me happy, but I’m a little worried at the same time.

00:04:22 Michele Goodwin:

Tell us about what got you to this point of thinking that you could actually take on Donald Trump. There are so many people who’ve been made to fear, are fearful, who are worried, and yet, you pursued this. What in you decided, one day, that you were going to take this on?

00:04:50 E. Jean Carroll:

No, no, no, no, I didn’t decide anything. I happened to go to a party at Molly Jong-Fast’s house. There was a guy sitting in the corner…standing in the corner. I recognized him. George Conway had written a wonderful piece in the Washington Post, saying that if you believe Juanita Broadwick about Bill Clinton, you better believe E. Jean Carroll. So, I went over to thank him, and he said, you know, E. Jean, you could sue Donald Trump. Now, that’s what I remember. He remembers that I said, George, could I sue Donald Trump?

But either way, he took a moment to explain to me what a civil lawsuit is, what a criminal lawsuit is, and by the way, he said, as we parted, the key words. I may be able to recommend someone. Now, when you hear that at a party, you know you’re never going to hear from that person again, but at 8:47 a.m. the next day, I get an email from George Conway. Says introduction, and he…I read the subject line that said introduction, and then I read the thing, and I saw the words Robbie Kaplan, I thought Robbie fucking Kaplan? Because she had just…she was trouncing the Nazis at the time.

00:06:21 Michele Goodwin:

She’s amazing, right? Charlottesville. Robbie is the person you want on your side if you need to take down an institution, if you need to take down the bullies.

00:06:31 E. Jean Carroll:

That’s Robbie Kaplan, and so, I met her the next day, and that was it. As we shook hands…

00:06:38 Roberta Kaplan:

I’m going to need to take some insulin, guys, if you continue with this. Go ahead.

00:06:43 E. Jean Carroll:

As we shook hands, I decided, let’s do it, when I met her. That’s it. That’s it. She’s the engine. She’s the engine.

00:06:52 Michele Goodwin:

So, Robbie, let me ask you then. So, E. Jean comes to you with a story about what happened to her. What are you thinking at this time? Is this a kind of case that you’re thinking, oh, yeah, let me take this on? Are you thinking, what’s the risk of doing this? What’s the risk to my firm? What’s the risk to me? We all knew, by that time, the allegations of how Trump fights back.

00:07:24 Roberta Kaplan:

So, interestingly, Michele, I wasn’t thinking, really, any of those things. What I was thinking was, one, she is an incredibly articulate, charismatic, charming person. I mean, E. Jean and I are opposites in a lot of ways, but I think it’s fair to say we liked each other from the very first moment we met. I just immediately liked her and just was overwhelmed by her charm, her charisma, and the way she spoke about things. Two, to be quite honest and frank, I noticed her looks.

It matters in these cases, sadly enough, how people look, and E. Jean looked like someone to use…to borrow a phrase, that was Donald Trump’s type, and three, I remember thinking…and not everyone on the team agreed with me on this, but I remember thinking, this story is so weird. The details of it are so odd and unique, that there is no way that she made this up. She is telling the truth. If someone were going to make something up, they would tell a very different story than the story that E. Jean Carroll was telling.

And so, that’s what I thought immediately, okay, let’s do it. I, obviously, thought what had happened was horrible. I thought Donald Trump deserved to pay E. Jean for the horrible damage that he’s done to her, both with the initial sexual assault and with the defamation, and I thought, if it’s okay with her, it’s okay with me, and I think I did speak to E. Jean, and correct me if I’m wrong, E. I did speak to you about the dangers and risks of the case. That, I know, I wanted to make sure you were on board with.

00:09:07 E. Jean Carroll:

Yeah, you did. You mentioned the risks, but you also laid out the case, and you laid it out right straight through the Supreme Court rulings. That’s how far ahead she was moving.

00:09:16 Roberta Kaplan:

Hopefully no rulings, but that they would try to get to the Supreme Court. Yes.

00:09:20 E. Jean Carroll:

Seven or eight moves ahead, by explaining what would happen when we reach the Supreme Court with this case. That was amazing.

Listeners, if you are just tuning in, I’m joined by E. Jean Carroll who successfully sued Donald Trump for sexual assault and defamation.  She is the author of the new book, Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President.  Robbie Kaplan, E. Jean’s lawyer also joins us.  Given the sensitive nature of content in this interview we want to alert our listeners. Let’s turn back as I ask E. Jean to take us back to what happened.

00:09:29 Michele Goodwin:

So, then, let’s talk then about these two parts that you’ve just mentioned, Robbie, which were both the sexual assault that dated back and then also the defamation. So, E. Jean, if you could take us back to what Donald Trump denied as having happened, saying, not my type, the title of your wonderful book, Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President. What’s the story?

00:10:02 Michele Goodwin:

What Donald Trump denies, saying that it could not have happened, and that, somehow, you got it wrong.

00:10:13 E. Jean Carroll:

Well, according to court transcript, he jammed his fingers up me, and then he inserted his penis.

00:10:20 Roberta Kaplan:

But how’d you get there? E., how did you end up in that situation?

00:10:24 E. Jean Carroll:

Oh, from the very beginning? Well, I met him at Bergdorf’s. We ran into each other. He was a man about town, a bon vivant, great looking. This is back in the day, 1996. I had a talk show. He recognized me and said, hey, you’re that advice lady, and I said, hey, you’re that real estate tycoon, and he said, come advise me, and it was like I’d fallen into a vat of honey. I’m an advice columnist. This is my purpose in life, to advise people, and also, it was just a hilarious story. I am going to help Donald Trump shop for a present.

So, we started to look for a present, and he didn’t like the handbags. He didn’t like the hats, but he sort of like…he said, I know lingerie. So, we took the escalator up. He was yakking the entire time, telling stories how he’s going to maybe think of buying Bergdorf’s, and you know, he was in a very jolly mood, and it was very light, very josh-y, very friendly. I admit I was flirting my brains out, and we got to the sixth floor, and we walked to the lingerie department, laughing at this point, and he snatches a bodysuit, a very beautiful, lacy, see-through, sort of grayish-blue bodysuit.

Lifts it off the counter and says, go put this on. I said, well, you go put it on, and he said, no, and he held it up against me. He said, it looks like it fits you. Go put it on. I said, no, it goes with your eyes. It’s your color. You put it on. I am laughing the whole time, because I had written a sketch for Saturday Night Live, something similar. So, to me, the scene is getting better and better. I picture him putting this tiny little lacy bit of lingerie on over his pants, right? Hilarious. So, he says, let’s go try this on, and he goes like…he gives a gesture of after you, madam, and I walked right into that dressing room.

Right in. Right in, to continue the story, laughing my brains out, and then it turned very dark. The door was slammed behind me. I was pushed up against the wall. His entire weight came down on my chest, and we don’t know how long it took. The fight went on for maybe three minutes, and I managed to get out, and I never spoke of it again. It was so humiliating and so horrible. I had to call…immediately when I left the Bergdorf’s, I had to call my best friend, or she wasn’t even a best friend at the time. She was just a mere friend, Lisa Birnbach, and I said, you’ll never believe what happened, and Lisa’s reaction was, E. Jean, you’ve got to stop laughing.

Apparently, I was laughing on the phone, and then I told her what happened, and Lisa’s the one who said, E. Jean, as she said in the court transcript, he raped you. At that moment, I had not really realized what had gone on. It was Lisa who had the brainpower to process it, and so, she said, come to my house. I’ll make you dinner, and I said, no. I just wanted to go home, and that’s what happened. We promised each other never to…never mention it, and of course, the next day, I ran into my best friend, Carol Martin, where I had my talk show.

Carol and I both had talk shows on Roger Ailes’ network, and I just saw Carol, and I needed a hug, and we went to her house, and I told her the whole story, and Lisa had told me, let’s go to the police. E. Jean, I will go to the police with you. Let’s go to the police. Carol had said, do not go to the…first of all, Carol was extremely upset. She was so upset. She was holding both my hands. I must have told her the story at least twice, maybe three times, and she said, do not go to the police. He has 200 lawyers. He’ll bury you.

00:15:02 Michele Goodwin:

No, I’m so sorry.

00:15:03 E. Jean Carroll:

But that was…it kept me silent…I was silent for 26 years after that.

00:15:10 Michele Goodwin:

That’s so painful, and Robbie, from what you, as a lawyer…you’ve heard stories like this, that people do stay silent. I shared, before we started recording here, my own story at 10 years old, having been raped by my father, and though having told friends and people over time and having left home and being emancipated as a teenager, then you’d lock that box, right? You just lock it, put it away and try to go on about your life, and everything that you’ve said, E. Jean, in terms of the embarrassment, the humiliation, all of these things, in a society that pushes that on you…because let’s be clear, this is not a society that welcomes women coming forward and telling their stories.

So, Robbie, I’m wondering, then, what you are thinking of in terms of strategy, because, at some point, E. Jean, you break your silence, and it’s after that time that, then, we’ve got this part number two, where it’s she’s not my type. You know, the sense that this could not have happened. That there’s some falsehood being lifted into the air, and really, Robbie, that’s when you come in and figure out what’s going to be the legal strategy here, and could you tell us about that?

00:16:32 Roberta Kaplan:

So, I thought, from the very beginning, that Carol Martin was our key to the case. She was going to be the person who won this case for us, and I thought that for a couple reasons. First of all, although Carol, back in 2019, when E. Jean first spoke of this, and probably since then, feels guilt, I think it’s fair to say, about the advice that she gave E. Jean. The truth is that, in 1996, it wasn’t bad advice. Had E. Jean gone to the Manhattan DA’s office in 1996 with this story, the chances that anything would have come of it are extremely low, and we all know that Donald Trump is a vengeful, vicious person, and Carol was right.

He would have come after her with 200 lawyers or more. So, I thought that there was something about that story that was so poignant and true, and Carol was giving advice to her best friend from her heart, the advice that she would want for someone who she loved who was close to her. The second thing about it is that I love both Carol and Lisa. They both testified at the trial, but I thought that the jury would think…and I think they did think this, that there is no way in God’s green Earth that Carol Martin was going to lie for anyone and commit perjury for anyone, even for E. Jean Carroll, her friend, in order to tell the story.

In other words, the jury would believe…I think they’d believe both Lisa and Carol, but they would really believe Carol. Why? First of all, she’s a TV newscaster in New York City for many years, and most people my age and up remember her. I certainly remember watching her on TV every night. Two, she kind of built her…like E. Jean Carroll, Carol built her life herself. She came from Detroit. She built this enormous career for herself. Everything she had, she had worked for, and she wasn’t going to risk it about some conspiracy that she hatched up with E. Jean Carroll to lie about Donald Trump.

And finally, ironically, in the case, there were texts that we had to produce to the other side, or that Carol had to produce to the other side, where Carol was just kind of complaining about E. Jean, the way people complain about their good friends, to her daughter, to other friends of theirs, and while the Trump side thought that was the greatest evidence in the world, I knew it was the opposite, because that’s the way people talk about their friends.

And it was completely believable, I think, to the jurors, particularly the women jurors, who I remember, when I raised this in closing, were kind of nodding their heads. That’s just how people, you know, react, and Carol was rightfully scared in 2019. She was worried about what would happen to her daughter and her granddaughter. Every reaction of hers throughout this entire story has been just so genuine, so real, that I knew the jury would believe it, and again, I’m not denigrating Lisa in any way. Lisa was phenomenal, but Carol was our ace in the hole. No question about it.

00:19:40 E. Jean Carroll:

Also, Joe Tacopina, professor, beat up on Carol Martin so badly. He beat up…there were six people of color on our jury, and there were four people who were grandparents. Probably they were older, and he is beating up on a Black icon, a grandmother, and he continued to beat her up, and she took it. Do not mess with Carol Martin. Do not mess with her. Really. He came off looking ridiculous, and Carol came off looking like a strong woman. Don’t do this to me, buddy, kind of thing, and it backfired terribly against him.

00:20:29 Michele Goodwin:

Ridiculous strategy, which I’m sure that you could see, Robbie, as an attorney sitting there and watching as he’s engaged in this. That this isn’t even law school 101. That you just wouldn’t do this. I want to take us back to deposition, because you talk about it, E. Jean, in your book, and I have to say, from the first pages, you had me laughing out loud. Plus, I was eating an apple. The apple flew out of my hands and landed on the floor.

I mean, it was just so much. You dedicate the book to Robbie, which is beautiful and beautifully done, and then you talk about…I can’t even do an introduction here. You say this book is for Robbie Kaplan, and then there’s no introduction, because you got to get right into it, and you get into it with talking about the deposition. So, my first question is to Robbie, and then I want to hear from you. So, Robbie, as you’re thinking about preparing E. Jean for the deposition, what’s going through your mind, and what’s the advice that you give?

00:21:32 Roberta Kaplan:

Oh, you have no idea what jar of worms you have exploded. So, both for prepping E. Jean for the deposition and for prepping E. Jean to testify on directed trial, both times, Ww spent a lot of…I think it’s fair to say we spent a lot of time. There were a couple of issues that we had to deal with. I’m laughing when I think about it, too. One, E. Jean is…as you can tell, is kind of like this Indiana, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. I don’t know, I’m sure E. Jean has felt depressed in her life, but I’m sure she never told anyone she felt depressed in her life.

Always looking at the positive, always going forward and moving past. It’s part of how she reacted to what happened to her with Donald Trump. When we tested this, we had a couple of mock jury sessions we used, and we tested with this. The women jurors hated it. Hated it. I mean, you see, like, on a little meter, where you can see their reaction to things in real time, and when E. Jean kept saying she wasn’t a victim, far worse has happened to other people…which is, no doubt, true, for sure, including the horrible things that happened to you, Michele.

But that the women jurors really didn’t like it at all, and so, probably because they all either were, themselves, victims or knew people who were victims, and I think they just…it disturbed them. So, we had to spend, I don’t know how many hours, many, many hours getting E. Jean to grapple with how damaged she had been by what Donald Trump did, and frankly, it wasn’t even the lawyers. It was our expert psychologist who we brought in who ended up testifying, who’s an expert on trauma studies, who really got…how many hours did you spend with Dr. Lebowitz, E.? Twenty-five or something?

00:23:26 E. Jean Carroll:

Twenty-six.

00:23:28 Roberta Kaplan:

So, it took 26 hours.

00:23:29 E. Jean Carroll:

…professor. Never been to a therapist, and 26 hours locked in a room with Dr. Leslie Lebowitz, the trauma expert, her Harvard rape studies, her Duke rape studies. She created the sexual assault protocol for the United States Air Force. This woman got to the bottom of things, because the first day I…oh, I’m fabulous. The second day I’m, well, I’m maybe not that fabulous. I had a stomachache, because I realized I had lost my entire…I never had a romance after this happened. I never had…never cooked dinner with somebody that I might fall in love with. Never had any of that. You know, that had left my life. So, Dr. Lebowitz brought that front and center to me, to such an extent, that I get a stomachache now thinking about it, as we’re talking about it. So, that’s…Robbie did that. She put me in that room for 26 hours and told me what the heck was going on.

00:24:38 Michele Goodwin:

You know, it strikes me that, in hearing that, that, of the various kinds of responses that people who experience, endure that kind of violence and trauma, that a part of it, you know, for so many, is, again, that let’s go on, and so, for you, it was…right? Layer and layer on top of that to, like, move on, and then it was this therapist who comes in, and reality sets. That, over the last 30 years, since that happened to you, all of these other things that could have been in your life, that romantic dinner, opening that bottle of wine, popping the cork on the champagne with somebody that you’re sitting across, all these things that other people would have been experiencing, somehow, you had buried so deeply, that your body couldn’t, your mind couldn’t even allow you into that space because of what had been taken from you, what you had experienced.

00:25:39 E. Jean Carroll:

Yeah, it was one of the saddest moments of my life.

00:25:42 Roberta Kaplan:

When you realize that? When you realized that with Leslie? Wow.

00:25:45 E. Jean Carroll:

Yeah. Yeah, and I have, to this day, been unable to overcome it.

00:25:51 Roberta Kaplan:

And we should just say, for the people listening, it’s not like E. Jean didn’t have an active romantic life before that. Probably the highlight of the deposition, which she starts the book with, was Habba’s obnoxious question about all her boyfriends.

00:26:05 Michele Goodwin:

That’s right. So, in fact, on the page-turner…because it is a page-turner, and it actually does start with that. Let me just say, in terms of not including an introduction, you say, “Friends, there will be no introduction. From the beginning, I want you to feel as discombobulated as I do as I go to trial,” and then you describe Habba. Can you take it from there and tell us what that was like? And now…and a question. Was the therapist before this or after this, when you saw the therapist who helped you to get to where you needed to be?

00:26:43 E. Jean Carroll:

It was after this, wasn’t it, Robbie? Because we didn’t talk about…

00:26:49 Roberta Kaplan:

I have to look it up. I’m not sure.

00:26:52 Michele Goodwin:

All right. Well, that doesn’t really matter. I’m glad that you got…okay, let’s go to Habba.

00:26:58 E. Jean Carroll:

I’m trying to think, because I remember when Trump hired his own therapist, Dr. Edgar P. Nace, and he started the conversation how are you, E. Jean? I said, I’m fabulous. So, I’m not sure…and he was shocked by that. He wrote that down. He was…you know who he was fascinated by? Not me. He was fascinated by Dr. Leslie Leibowitz and how she could spend, you know, 26 hours talking to me.

00:27:28 Roberta Kaplan:

He couldn’t figure it out.

00:27:29 E. Jean Carroll:

He only managed to do one… at about 37 minutes, and he was done. He was out of there. Yeah, so, and he came to no conclusion. He came to no conclusion, except that I was torn up over my divorce, which is, you know, a fact. That was what he came up with.

00:27:50 Roberta Kaplan:

One of the other issues, Michele, in prepping E. Jean to testify was that she couldn’t say I’m fabulous every time she got asked a question on the stand or in the deposition. It wasn’t easy to get her there, trust me.

00:28:01 E. Jean Carroll:

You said you were going to bring a mallet to court, and every time I said it, you were going to hit me with it.

00:28:08 Michele Goodwin:

I want to take this moment, again, to just think about just what a journey it is in trying to live a life, flourish in a life after a sexual assault, after being victimized, after abuse, right? I mean, and how it’s a society that actually finds it really difficult then for a woman to be fabulous. There must be something wrong with you if you are fabulous. There must be something wrong with you if you can laugh, right?

It seems that there’s no way of winning. If you’re depressed and you’re angry, well, then there’s something that’s wrong with you in that regard, too, and of course, that sense of trying to get to that space of fabulous and feeling good is because you’ve been so deeply traumatized, is because you’ve been so deeply wounded, and it’s that effort to try to grab something back, right?

It reminds me of this adage that’s come through the Black American experience, that dates back centuries, which is “never let them steal your joy.” I don’t know that Black people would be alive in this country today had it not been for… ago, dating back to the 1600s. I was just saying, you know, you’re not a citizen by federal law. You’re not a citizen by state law. In fact, they say you’re just property, and so, what is this thing that you can hold onto and that you tell your children generation after generation? I remember my grandmothers saying it to me. Never let them steal your joy.

00:29:54 E. Jean Carroll:

I just wrote it down. Can you tell me, professor, how…I can’t even imagine at 10. How did you go on and become one of the most famous attorneys in the country? How did you do it? How did you do it?

00:30:14 Michele Goodwin:

Well, I’ll tell you this. I think that I was so deeply aided in my early years by being exposed to women like that, my grandmothers, who are still carrying these legacies with them and were planting seeds that became so important for me later on, and those seeds, I think, in terms of what we share in this conversation, is that sense of dignity, and in fact, from what Robbie does with what she does, right, it’s like that restoring of dignity and humanity, and it’s also the sense that, we don’t like bullies, right? It may not be immediately that you can get at your bully or respond back, right, but it’s this fundamental sense that distinguishes right from wrong. So, that’s what I have to offer to this.

00:31:05 E. Jean Carroll:

Strong women in your background is what…it’s in your DNA some way.

00:31:13 Michele Goodwin:

They made a difference, and I think, in conversation with that, I think about the work that Robbie does, because it’s standing in those trenches and doing this fundamental work that people may not see. You know, we get the sense of equality out of our Constitution, not because some men scribbled some things on paper years ago, but it was women in the trenches protesting, sitting at lunch counters, refusing to give up their seats… hoses on them and dogs on them when they’re trying to vote.

It’s Fannie Lou Hamer being beaten up in a jail, and who’s saying, I’m doing this because I refuse to be a second-class citizen. It’s not founding fathers who scribbled it. You know, important notions put on paper and then ratified but not made real until we could all experience it, right? So, the deposition, because you begin with it, and you describe Habba, right? Can you describe her for the readers, what you were just experiencing, for our listeners? And there will be those who read this transcript, right? So, what was that like, this lead-up to her actually asking you about how many people you’ve had sex with?

00:32:34 E. Jean Carroll:

Well, she was…she’s incredibly beautiful. She was wearing a Chanel jacket. Robbie argues it’s not…she said it was a knockoff. She has cheekbones like tulip bulbs. High, high heels, and I got dizzy just…

00:32:52 Roberta Kaplan:

These are the things we talk about in our case. This is how we prepare for testimony.

00:32:55 E. Jean Carroll:

Yeah, after the deposition, we didn’t talk about that. We talked about whether or not Habba’s jacket was a genuine Chanel or not, and she…Robbie had told me 5 or 10 times, do not trust Alina Habba, Esquire. She is not your friend. Robbie must’ve said it six times, maybe 10. So, I walk in, and Alina Habba greets me with the most beautiful smile you have ever…good morning, Ms. Carroll, but there was such arrogance behind that smile. I knew what Robbie was…and you know what? I’d catch myself. I really liked her. There was something so likeable about her.

Michele Goodwin:

Listeners, if you are just tuning in, I’m joined by journalist and author, E. Jean Carroll.  She successfully sued Donald Trump for sexually assaulting and defaming her. Her pathbreaking lawyer, Roberta Kaplan also joins us.  In this part of our interview, we’ve turned to the deposition. Let’s turn back as she’s describing Trump’s attorney 

E. Jean Carroll:

I liked her, because she’s a likeable person, and by the way, watch out, America, she’s going to run for office, and then look out, and so, she is persuasive. She’s 100 percent confident for absolutely no reason, and Robbie and she faced off. It was two polar opposites, two…Robbie had a smile on her face almost the entire time, and the glorious end of the deposition is Robbie Kaplan saying, for the record, I would like to make a record. Richard Harris was Dumbledore, and Ben Vereen was the first Broadway star I ever saw in my first Broadway show. That was what she put on the record. Thank you, Robbie Kaplan.

00:34:39 Michele Goodwin:

So, Robbie, why?

00:34:41 Roberta Kaplan:

Well, for two reasons. One, because I was, like, genuinely…forget Richard Harris. When she said Ben Vereen, I literally stopped the deposition, went off the record, and I said, did you just say that you saw Ben Vereen? And she’s like, yeah. I was like, oh my god. I said, when he was starring in Pippin? She’s like, I don’t know. Meanwhile, all the associates, none of them…they’re young. They don’t even know who Ben Vereen is.

And we’re having this whole conversation about Ben Vereen and E. Jean, and but as it developed, I realized that it was making a substantive point, which is Donald Trump was not E. Jean’s type. She would have had zero interest in Donald Trump, other than, like, a funny story to tell people later that night at cocktails, and I realized that her telling the story of all the men she’d had relationships with was actually very powerful. I also knew the judge was never letting any of it in, but wasn’t going to, you know, have a fight with the judge in the middle of the deposition when she tried to get him on the phone. So, that…

00:35:41 Michele Goodwin:

That was also poor strategy, right? And of course, it was meant to demean and belittle, right, by asking you that? Whom you’ve, had sex with? When did you lose your virginity? All of those things…no relevance to what’s at issue. So, we get to this point that is probably a crucial turning point in this, Robbie, which is this moment of the photos. Can you describe what the strategy was there and what happened with this whole photo incident?

[AUDIO CLIP FROM TRUMP’S DEPOSITION]

00:36:15 Roberta Kaplan:

So, this is Donald Trump’s deposition. We’re at Mar-a-Lago. It was my second time there in two weeks, because I had another case against Trump where I deposed him the week before. We were in a different room, though, and we were…I think I was…at the beginning of the deposition, was trying to establish that he knew who E. Jean Carroll was.

So, I asked him a whole bunch of questions about what shows he watched and what shows he went on the air about and you know, how he had a very active social life and how he ate at the same restaurants that E. Jean ate at. He didn’t understand what I was doing, but that’s what I was trying to do, and at some point, he said something like, yeah, you know, I realize I met her once. I think he thinks it’s a charity event. I guess it was, in a way. We think it was an NBC dinner, and he said, there’s a photograph of it, and I said, oh, yeah, I think I happen to have that photograph. Now, I’ll be honest with you, I’m not telling you that I’ve never tried to trick someone in a deposition. That would be dishonest.

I certainly have, at times, in depositions with difficult witnesses. This was not that. He said, I think there’s a photo. I turned to my colleague and said, could you hand me the document? I hand it across the table and said, is this the photo you were just talking about? And that’s when he pointed at it and said, that’s Marla, and I said, what did you just say? He said, Marla. I said, you mean your wife Marla Maples? And he said, yeah, pointing at E. Jean so everyone knows, and that’s when Habba immediately interrupted and corrected him. The hardest part was keeping a straight face, because I basically wanted to start dancing, you know?

00:37:56 Michele Goodwin:

No kidding, because this, coming from the person who has been defaming, saying that that she’s not his type, that he never would’ve done this, and then there it is that he points and says then, more than once, that that is his ex-wife Marla, the person who, presumably, was his type.

[AUDIO FROM TRUMP’S DEPOSITION]

00:38:21 Roberta Kaplan:

It was classic Trump in a couple ways. One, after Habba interrupts him, he says, in the transcript, oh, yeah, now he understands. He’s like, oh, it’s a blurry photo. So, it’s not a blurry photo. We showed it to the jury as many times as we could possibly get away with, and in my closing argument, I said to the jury, I said, that’s classic Trump. You saw. He realized he was wrong, and then he lies. You saw the photo, ladies and gentlemen. It’s not blurry. It’s not a blurry photo, and then two later…a couple hours later in the deposition, just as an aside, I said something to him like, well, I assume that all your wives were your type, and he was like, oh, yes, definitely.

00:39:00 E. Jean Carroll:

Robbie, you loved that.

00:39:01 Michele Goodwin:

Because what’s the answer to that, right?

00:39:02 Roberta Kaplan:

Right. Not my type, my wives, right.

00:39:07 E. Jean Carroll:

Professor, Robbie has left out one important thing. Trump told Robbie Kaplan that he was sorry, but she was not his type, either.

[AUDIO FROM TRUMP’S DEPOSITION]

00:39:19 Michele Goodwin:

Why would he do that?

00:39:22 Roberta Kaplan:

It was a different point I think, but we played it for the jury, but the other people on my team were worried that the jurors were going to believe Trump, and I was like, no, guys, the jurors are going to hate this when he says it to me.

00:39:37 Michele Goodwin:

So, then, on the day…so, the trial goes, and how many days was the trial?

00:39:42 Roberta Kaplan:

So, the first trial…there were two trials. The first trial was about whether the assault happened in a later deposition he made during the case. That was nine days, E., I think?

00:39:54 Michele Goodwin:

Okay, so then just over a week, and then, on the day in which this all ends and you get the jury verdict, what’s your feeling then, both of you? What are you thinking at that time?

00:40:10 Roberta Kaplan:

You go first, E.

00:40:11 E. Jean Carroll:

Well, would get in the car. We’re elated. The way Robbie is exploding with her happiness is Robbie has to talk, and she has to be on the phone. She is so full tilt. She’s talking to everybody she knows at the top of her lungs, and I am sitting quietly in the corner of the car looking out the window, because we started in Chinatown. We went through Chinatown. Then we went through SoHo. Then we went through the Village, and I’m thinking, Donald Trump, this is your town, and I just beat the shit out of you.

We’re both very happy, and then, when we got back, there was champagne. There was dancing. There was a feast, and I understand…someone told me that there was a rehearsal for an off-Broadway show, and there was an intense scene going. So, we ran out on the stage and said Carol won, and everybody exploded, and the house lights went off and on. Carol Martin, her attorney had called her and said there’s a verdict. There’s a verdict. Carol is driving in the car. She swerves off the highway, goes…slams on the brakes. I’m not even sure if she turned off the car.

Walked to a bench, laid down, because she was afraid she’d faint, puts her phone on her chest. The thing buzzes, and it said Carol won, and Carol, to this moment, thinks that she would’ve died if she had been behind the wheel when she got that. She was so happy. So, it was an explosive moment across the country. Women felt, you know, vindicated, and of course, then the next day on CNN Town Hall, Trump goes on the air and says absolutely everything he just had to pay 5 million for saying about me. So, that’s where Robbie Kaplan comes in.

00:42:28 Michele Goodwin:

So, Robbie, what happens, got this victory, and almost immediately, here you’re back again, and you make this…clearly, you make the decision that, we’re going to go back to court, because, clearly, he didn’t, what, learn the first time?

00:42:48 Roberta Kaplan:

Yeah, he couldn’t stop. I mean, the original trial, the verdict was 5.3. The second…

00:42:56 Michele Goodwin:

Million, listeners.

00:42:57 Roberta Kaplan:

Million. The second trial, buckle your seatbelts, it was 83.6. Do I got that right, E.? I know it’s…

00:43:06 E. Jean Carroll:

83.3.

00:43:07 Roberta Kaplan:

83.3. It’s 88 now with interest, because it’s been sitting on deposit, and the single reason for that, there’s only one reason, is because Trump could not stop, and although he didn’t show up at the first trial, at the second trial, somehow, thinking it was going to change things, he showed up, and then acted like a 14-year-old juvenile delinquent. I don’t know how else to describe it.

He clowned around. He was contemptuous of the judge. He didn’t follow the court’s orders. Every day, he would come into trial. He would leave trial in the afternoon, and then he would go…I don’t know what they were doing. It wasn’t Trump Tower, but somewhere like that, and record a video repeating the defamation again. So, it was just…he walked out of my closing argument after 10 minutes. I mean, he just…every bit of that 88 million dollars is based on Donald Trump’s own conduct during the case and in that courtroom.

00:44:04 E. Jean Carroll:

Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

00:44:09 Michele Goodwin:

So, very recently, E. Jean, I think it was on July 10, 2025, after hearing from the United States Courts of Appeal. They said Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings, and that he had not carried his burden to show that any of the claimed error, or combination of claimed errors, affected his substantial rights, as required to warrant a new trial, and on that day, on social media, you wrote, E. Jean, “So long, old man. The United States Courts of Appeals 2^nd Circuit bids thee farewell.” Robbie, what are you expecting next? Are you expecting that there may be an appeal? Can we even talk about that, hopefully, this is just all over…

00:45:11 Roberta Kaplan:

I wish.

00:45:11 Michele Goodwin:

And then..  and then it’s done.

00:45:12 Roberta Kaplan:

I wish. It will be soon, I hope. I mean, on the first trial, the 5.5, they lost at the 2^nd Circuit. That’s what E. Jean was referring to. They then sought en banc. They lost en banc. You know, the court refused to have an en banc hearing, and they have told us they are going to go to SCOTUS. They have about two months left to do that. I think you get 90 days. We assume they will seek SCOTUS. On the first verdict, I think we are extremely confident that the Supreme Court will not take it. There is no SCOTUS-worthy issue there, and so, I would be just extraordinarily surprised if they do that. So, I think E. Jean will have that money within the next six months to a year, maximum. The second verdict, what I like to call the big kahuna verdict, the 80-plus-million-dollar verdict, I argued that how long ago, E.? About three weeks ago? Four weeks ago?

00:46:08 E. Jean Carroll:

Yeah, it was brilliant. You should’ve seen her. She blew the top off the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2^nd Circuit. The top just literally lifted up, because…

00:46:19 Roberta Kaplan:

People must think I pay her to say these things.

00:46:22 E. Jean Carroll:

No, no, she was…

00:46:23 Michele Goodwin:

She’s not alone, Robbie. You took on the Nazis, okay? Charlottesville. I still remember the day that Heather Heyer was killed. Edie Windsor… look, let’s just be real, Robbie. You’ve been a real champion.

00:46:45 Roberta Kaplan:

Thank you. So, that was argued. We don’t have a decision yet. They have to decide two separate things, both the underlying appeal, which is mostly about whether he had presidential immunity, which is mostly about whether he waived presidential immunity. The 2nd Circuit has already held that he did, in an opinion by Judge Cabranes, who’s not exactly a flaming liberal, that he did, in fact, waive presidential immunity.

So, that’s one issue, and then there’s this Westfall Act issue, which is similar to presidential immunity, but different. He also waived that, so that’s what the opinion is going to be about. I think it’s going to be long, because they’ve got a lot of issues to tackle. They will certainly, if they lose, seek en banc again. They will most certainly not get en banc. The 2nd Circuit hates en banc, so they’re not going to do it here. They will absolutely then seek to bring that case to the Supreme Court, as well.

00:47:39 Michele Goodwin:

There’s a lot to…it looks like there’s a long road ahead.

00:47:42 Roberta Kaplan:

Yeah, sadly, there is.

00:47:44 Michele Goodwin:

But that said, there are some really important implications of winning the battle against Donald Trump, and just to remind our listeners…because, right now it’s a time in which people are feeling quite overwhelmed with just the last six months, and at the time in which you first did this, both of you, E. Jean and Robbie, it’s coming at a time when kids are being locked in cages, being fed frozen burritos, where there’s been a Muslim ban, where there’s just been so much that’s maybe seeming so distant for people to remember.

But it’s in the wake of that, that you’re actually doing that first trial preparation and work, but this is a victory, and it’s an incredibly important victory, and E. Jean, your book is just so victorious in and of itself. So, I want to just quickly get to one question for you, E. Jean, which is folks didn’t know about this book. You were connecting with people on Signal. So, why was that E. Jean? Because this was not even something that people could pre-order, let’s say. Why did you have to keep it a secret?

00:48:56 E. Jean Carroll:

Well, first, it’s just fun to have a secret. Just fun, but the publishers did not want to be hampered in any way. They wanted those books in the stores before the White House heard about it. So, those books were…I actually wanted to shimmy up the side of the building to get in to see one of these books, because I knew they existed, but they were in a locked room. Not kidding, and the editor and I communicated over Signal, both by text and by phone. That’s how careful they were keeping this book silent, and it worked, and it dropped, and it had a…professor, people…many people in this country have never heard that he was held liable for sexual assault. They just don’t know it. They do not know it.

00:49:57 Michele Goodwin:

Well, now…

00:49:57 E. Jean Carroll:

This is a little bit. This is a little bit. A few more people know.

00:50:02 Michele Goodwin:

Well, it’s such an important book, and what has occurred is so critically important, and I want to get your sense about what this means now for other women, and it’s not cliché, but it’s real. Folks need to hold onto the possibilities, right? I mean, this is what gives people the courage to be able to come forward, and do you feel that? Do either of you feel then, get that sense, that this is a victory, then, that’s not just for E. Jean, but the potential for other people who have also experienced hurt and harm?

00:50:41 Roberta Kaplan:

Yes, I’ve heard you say that 100 times, E.

00:50:42 E. Jean Carroll:

All women. It’s for all women, but professor, I hate to take this subject and run backwards, but when you and I were chatting before Robbie came on, you had said there are two critical things that face the country right now. I think now’s the time for you to tell us what those are.

00:51:02 Michele Goodwin:

Well, I’ll tell you what those are then. Then I’m going to ask you both about a silver lining. So, the two things that I think are critically important right now are, one, thought leadership on the right and for people who don’t care for democracy and civil liberties sand civil rights. They’ve been spending a lot of money on thought leadership on things that just seem wacky and crazy, but they’re willing to give millions of dollars for it. Dismantle the Department of Education.

Sure, we’ll give some money to help you think about that. Get rid of Roe v. Wade? Sure. We’ll give you some money to think about that. Dismantle and go after LGBTQ equality and marriage equality? Yeah, let’s give you some money to go after, you know, that. Dismantle agencies and government as we know it, sure, let’s invest in that. On the other hand, where we critically need thought leadership, it needs to be invested in, and it’s not. You know, it’s this sort of sense of, you know, fix it within six weeks.

Where what you’ve had on the far right is that we’ll give you 50 years to figure it out, and we’ll keep paying you for it, and the same is just not true. Project 2025 is all thought leadership. It’s all ideas, and there was a Project 2020. I mean, that’s it, but then the second thing…and this is what your book does so brilliantly, and I think is really the story that comes out of this case, and that is narrative. How do we narrate our own stories, right? You know, there’s that saying. You know, there’s this African proverb folks say, but the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter, until the lioness has her say, and that’s it, right?

00:52:44 E. Jean Carroll:

Oh, hold on. I got to write that down. The tale of the…

00:52:47 Michele Goodwin:

The tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter, until the lioness has her say, and so, right now, I’m on with two lionesses who had their say, and I love it. So, this time’s gone by way, way too quickly. Those are the two things that I think are critical. Supporting thought leadership and narrative.

00:53:11 Roberta Kaplan:

And stop fighting with ourselves. We need to stop fighting with ourselves.

00:53:15 Michele Goodwin:

That’s right. That’s absolutely right, and which you very well know, Robbie…

00:53:32 Roberta Kaplan:

Yeah.

00:53:34 Michele Goodwin:

So, I want to close by asking about a silver lining. What’s the silver lining that you see going forward at a time in which Trump’s back in the White House right now? That’s daunting for many people. There are people who’ve lost their jobs. There are estimations that there are going to be people who die as a result of all these executive orders. We’ve seen so much dismantling taking place in the last six months, that, for so many, it feels like six decades. A silver lining, and I’m going to start with you, Robbie. What do you see as a silver lining in these times?

00:54:06 Roberta Kaplan:

So, this is going to sound crazy. When I was in college, I actually was a Russian History major, and one of my professors, my thesis advisor, had a theory about Russia, which I actually think is probably right. That the reason why the Russian government, over time, has always been pretty bad, I think is fair to say…different names, but kind of the same, regardless of what the names were. Is because Russia never had institutions of civil society. It had never had independent lawyers, never had independent courts, never had a church that was independent from the tsar or the government.

Didn’t have any of the things that we’ve had in our country. Not only have, but have had for a very long time, and so, my silver lining is that, ultimately, it’s going to be ugly to get there, I think, but ultimately, our institutions of civil society, our courts, our churches, our synagogues, our free press is going to hold up, and our democracy and this amazing promise not fulfilled, but promise that this country has always presented to the world is going to continue, but it’s going to be ugly for some time, and people like us are going to have to keep fighting. All the lionesses are going to have to fight.

00:55:26 E. Jean Carroll:

Wow.

00:55:28 Michele Goodwin:

Thank you so much for that. I know, isn’t that a wow? It is.

00:55:30 E. Jean Carroll:

Oh, I love that, Robbie. I would like to leave your listeners with that. I think that’s one of the best things I’ve heard in a while, Robbie. I love it. That’s good. I love it. Also, I have an idea. Watch the E. Jean Carroll Substack. I want to get everybody together. We’re going to choose a day sometime in September. We’re all going to go on our social media, and we’re all going to tweet the same thing. What should we tweet?

00:56:00 Michele Goodwin:

I love that. That maybe he’s not our type.

00:56:04 Roberta Kaplan:

That’s great.

00:56:05 E. Jean Carroll:

He’s not our type. We all do it. Like banging the pans during the COVID, you know, one day, and we all blast it out at the same time, probably 7 o’clock in the evening, and we let him have it.

00:56:18 Roberta Kaplan:

Hashtag not our type. I love that.

00:56:20 Michele Goodwin:

I love that. Hashtag not our type. We’ll push that out at Ms. Magazine. I want to thank you both, E. Jean Carroll, Roberta Kaplan. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of On the Issues. Thank you so much.

00:56:38 Roberta Kaplan:

Thank you for having us.

00:56:39 E. Jean Carroll:

Yes, thank you very much.

00:56:43 Michele Goodwin:

To my guests and listeners, that’s it for today’s episode of On the Issues with Michele Goodwin. I want to thank my guests, E. Jean Carroll and Robbie Kaplan, for joining us and being part of this critical and insightful conversation, and to our listeners, I thank you for tuning in for the full story. We hope you’ll join us again for our next episode, where we will be reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is, as usual. It will be an episode you will not want to miss, and for our listeners that may have experienced or be suffering now from intimate violence, help is available.

The hotline for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, otherwise known as RAINN, is 800-656-4673. That’s 800-656-4673. You may also access their online chat services from their website. For more information about what we discussed today, head to msmagazine.com, and be sure to subscribe, and if you believe, as we do, that women’s voices matter, that equality for all persons cannot be delayed, and that rebuilding America, being unbought and unbossed, and reclaiming our time are important, then be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to On the Issues with Michele Goodwin in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever it is that you listen to your pods.

We are ad free and reader supported. Help us reach new listeners and bring hard-hitting content, the kind that you’ve come to expect, by rating, reviewing, and subscribing. Let us know what you think about our show, and please support independent feminist media. Look for us at msmagazine.com for new content and special episode updates, and if you want to reach out to us to recommend guests for our show or topics that you want to hear about, then write to us at ontheissues@msmagazine, and we do read our mail.

This has been your host Michele Goodwin reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is. On the Issues with Michele Goodwin is a Ms. Magazine joint production. Michele Goodwin is the Executive Producer of Ms. Studios. Our producers for this episode are Roxy Szal, Oliver Haug, Allison Whelan, and our Ms. Studios intern, Emerson Panigrahi. The creative vision behind our work and design is Brandi Phipps. Editing is done by Natalie Holland and Emerson Panigrahi, and music is by Chris J. Lee.