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After spending years on two lawsuits and confronting Donald Trump face-t0-face for the first time since he sexually abused and then repeatedly defamed her – according to a judge and jury – E. Jean Carroll says she was “terrified” to see her abuser in the courtroom last week, but when she did she says she realized he “was nothing.”
Carroll, a journalist, author, and advice columnist who says Trump’s attacks and denials “shattered” her reputation and ruined her career, was awarded $83.3 million by a federal jury on Friday, adding to the $5 million a previous jury in her first case that went to trial awarded her. Trump, barring appeals, will have to pay her over $88 million.
“I hadn’t seen him since he assaulted me in the dressing room and preparing to see him was terrifying,” Carroll, with her attorney Roberta Kaplan by her side, told CNN on Monday (video below). “The days leading up, as Robbie brought me around stronger and stronger, it was so – I hadn’t slept. I hadn’t eaten. I couldn’t think, I lost my language when she was trying to prepare me to go do testimony in front of Donald Trump.”
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“And then when we were in the courtroom,” Carroll continued, “and Robbie went to the lectern, she said, ‘Good morning, E. Jean, please state your name and spell it for the jury, for the court,’ and there he was. And he was nothing. Just no power, he had, he was zero. That was, I was flabbergasted.”
Carroll said she made eye contact with Trump “many times,” and described what that experience was like for her.
“He’s an emperor without clothes. It’s like looking at nothing. It was like nothing,” she revealed.
“I had been prepared for the worst force, you know, on the earth today, the most powerful, the most, the most effective, the most money, the riches, the most, you know? You know, and there he is: He’s nothing. It’s just the people around him who give him the power. It’s the Emperor without clothes. It’s Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale. You know? People just gave him clothes when he wasn’t wearing any, that, remember the fairy tale? So that’s Donald Trump.”
Kaplan, a noted attorney famous for successfully arguing a landmark same-sex marriage case before the U.S. Supreme Court, said she only knew Trump had walked ut of the courtroom during her closing argument because the judge noted it as she was speaking. She added, “In a case about whether you can follow the rules or not, and you can not be a bully, not following the rules and acting like a bully is not a good move. So I thought to myself, OK, that’s just going to give us more money.”
Carroll says she will use some of the money she won from Trump for “good,” including to help women.
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“We had two different objectives. Ours was to win a case, his was to win voters. We’ll see how that plays out. He’s using me to win voters. Sexual assault, a man found liable for sexual assault is using the woman who is sexually assaulted to get votes,” Carroll lamented.
“We’re going to do good with that money,” Carroll continued, joking they would “do what Mary Trump has suggested,” and turn “Trump Tower into an animal sanctuary.”
“We’re inspired to not waste a penny of this. And we have some good ideas that we’re working on,” she said, noting that “Donald Trump hates women. Remember the New York magazine, the famous quote, when they said what you think of women? And he said, ‘Women. They’re not worth a piece of crap.’ Remember that quote?”
(HuffPost once reported Trump has said, “Women, you have to treat them like shit.”)
“And so I think one of the things we could do, seeing how he’s very instrumental in taking away women’s rights over their bodies across the United States, maybe we can think about how we can restore women their rights, use a little money for that.”
Watch the full interview below or at this link:
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