At his wedding to Marla Maples in December 1993, two months after the birth of their daughter, Tiffany, Donald Trump got talking to Howard Stern. According to the shock jock, Trump allegedly opined, charmingly: “Vagina is expensive.” Trump and Maples split in 1997. Nearly 30 years later, E Jean Carroll, an adjudicated victim of Trump’s verbal and sexual abuse, might at least in one way concur with his crude and sexist analysis.
Carroll was assaulted by Trump in a changing room at Bergdorf Goodman, the New York department store. Thanks to court cases arising from that encounter, Trump owes her “slightly over $100m”, Carroll writes.
Subtitled One Woman vs a President, at 368 pages her book – Not My Type – is a breezy read, packed with revenge, joy and barbed wit. Carroll is a former writer for Elle and Saturday Night Live, a biographer of Hunter S Thompson. At 81, she has little to hide.
In court, Alina Habba, a Trump lawyer (now US attorney for New Jersey) said: “I hate to ask you this, but – approximately – how many people do you think you’ve slept with?
“Eight? Could you list me those people?”
Carroll approached it all with a disarming smile. But scars remain. There is venom in her book, however sweetly draped. Her contempt for Habba, for example, is unvarnished.
In May 2023, a federal civil jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, forcible touching, and defamation. The jury awarded $5m in damages, rejecting Trump’s defense that Carroll was not his “type”. In a deposition, though, Trump mistook her for Maples. After the decision, Trump lashed out. That was a colossal mistake.
“While I am sleeping, Trump has his CNN town hall and cracks everybody up with jokes about sexual assault and repeats every single thing that a unanimous federal jury just declared he has to pay me $5m for saying,” Carroll writes.
“And, after I wake up? I sue him again.”
It cost him. In January 2024, a second federal jury handed down another adverse verdict. The price tag topped $83m.
Justice grinds on. So does interest accruing.
“What am I gonna do with the $100m?” Carroll asks, quickly answering: “I, E Jean Carroll, pledge to make Trump very, very mad by giving most of the $100m to all things he hates. If Trump despises it … I’m gonna be giving money to it.”
Think reproductive freedom, voting rights and combating the climate crisis.
Trump has lost two rounds of appeals of the $5m judgment, the latest in early June. Review by the US supreme court seems likely. The second circuit intermediate appellate court, in Manhattan, is set to hear arguments in the $83m case later this month.
Gleefully, Carroll takes a hatchet to Trump and a stiletto to his legal team. She homes in on Trump’s age, girth and flamboyance. Her prose is colorful and memorable. Though she is not above using simple words, to trash Trump as merely “old” and “fat”, in one very long and colorful sentence, she describes what she believes jurors witnessed:
“Some are masked, all are upright, and, no way in God’s hell – whether they love Trump or loathe Trump – are they gonna miss telling their kids and grandkids that they saw the famous old geezer, with his peacock-blue tie jumping out in front of his shirt and his hair twirled across his forehead like Bette Davis in Now, Voyager, raise his small right hand and swear to tell the truth.”
God, Trump, Bette Davis and peacocks. That’s writing.
Habba, lead defense counsel at the second trial, earns particular scorn:
“Wow! Alina Habba, Esq looks so pretty with her dark hair pulled into a low bun – the humble-brag of a beauty! – with her tremendous high heels, and her very tight, white sweater, and her electric-blue pantsuit hugging her round bottom, and her diamonds glittering from her ears.”
The chaser: “At one point, when [Carroll’s counsel] is standing and objecting, Alina Habba, Esq smiles at the jury like Tiffany Haddish in Girls Trip, then turns to Judge Kaplan and asks: ‘Why is she objecting?’
“His Honor replies: ‘This is not my law school examination.’”
Kaplan and Carroll are not alone in their dim assessment of Habba. To quote the author Michael Wolff, she was “a lawyer with little relevant experience … hopelessly mismatched by Carroll’s legal team”.
Carroll sheds light on prospective evidence that her team ultimately declined to introduce at trial, concerning Wolff, Trump and the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She reminds us that in his book Too Famous, published in 2021, Wolff wrote that Trump “regaled” Epstein with “torrid details” of what passed between Trump and Carroll.
Given the dramas of the Access Hollywood Tape and “Pussygate”, and Trump’s trial testimony that “unfortunately or fortunately” stars can grab women, Wolff’s tale carried at least a whiff of credibility. On the other hand, problems surrounding admissibility and hearsay might have been insurmountable. Furthermore, as Carroll writes, the “two words ‘Jeffrey Epstein’ are so flamingly prejudicial”. In the end, her legal team punted on injecting Epstein into the case.
Hearteningly, Carroll is able to conclude her book on an upbeat note.
“So, Friends, it looks like we are doing a bit of good here,” she writes. “We prove Trump is a liar. We change the rape law in New York.”
At the first trial, the jury found that Trump had not raped Carroll because it determined that he had not penetrated her with penis. But after Judge Kaplan determined the rape claim was “substantially true” in a 7 August 2023 decision, the statute was amended in early 2024. The “rape is rape” bill expanded the law to include nonconsensual anal, oral, and vaginal sexual contact.
That victory belongs to Carroll alone.
Not My Type: One Woman vs a President is published in the US by Macmillan
