Who Is E. Jean Carroll? The Columnist Who Sued Trump and Won

May 11, 2023 Updated October 14, 2026 6 min read

The story

E. Jean Carroll at her October 2022 deposition, from the trailer for Ask E. Jean. Photo: Abramorama, Ask E. Jean trailer (still)

For 26 years, E. Jean Carroll told strangers in Elle what to do with their lives, and she was famously unwilling to coddle them. Then she followed her own hardest advice and spent seven years in court against the man who is now president. On June 29, 2026, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Donald Trump’s appeal of the $5 million verdict, and the first of her two cases ended. I have read a lot of court records for this site. Few of them end this cleanly.

Here is who she is, what the juries decided, and what is still open, with the receipts attached.

Before the lawsuits: a columnist with a crown and a byline

E. Jean Carroll being crowned at a pageant in the 1960s — Carroll at a pageant crowning in the 1960s, long before the advice column.

Elizabeth Jean Carroll was born on December 12, 1943, in Detroit, which makes her 82. At Indiana University she was crowned Miss Indiana University in 1963 and Miss Cheerleader USA in 1964.

The writing career is the part that matters. She was a contributing editor at Outside, Esquire, New York and Playboy, where she was the first woman in that role. She wrote for Saturday Night Live in its 1986-87 season, which earned her an Emmy nomination in 1987. From 1994 to 1996 she hosted Ask E. Jean on NBC’s cable channel America’s Talking, and the show was nominated for a CableACE Award in 1995. Her “Ask E. Jean” column ran in Elle from 1993 until the magazine let her go in early 2020; Elle said the decision had nothing to do with Trump. My read: the career explains the courtroom. She spent decades telling readers to stop apologizing for themselves, and she was always going to be a difficult witness to rattle.

The accusation and the two verdicts

In June 2019, in New York magazine and in her book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, Carroll wrote that Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. Trump denied it, said he did not know her, and suggested she wanted to sell a book. She sued him for defamation that November.

E. Jean Carroll and attorney Roberta Kaplan outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan — Carroll with her attorney Roberta Kaplan outside the Manhattan federal courthouse in 2023.

Two cases followed, and the order is confusing, so here it is plainly. The second suit, filed in 2022 under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, went to trial first. On May 9, 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded $5 million. It did not find rape under New York’s narrow legal definition; Judge Lewis Kaplan later wrote that the evidence showed rape in the common, modern sense of the word. This was a civil case, so “liable”, not “guilty”, is the correct word, and the original version of this page got that wrong.

The first suit came next. On January 26, 2024, a second jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million for his 2019 statements: $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages.

Carroll arriving at the Manhattan federal courthouse, from the trailer for Ask E. Jean. Photo: Abramorama, Ask E. Jean trailer (still)

@todayshow “He did it and you know it.” — E. Jean Carroll tells Savannah Guthrie what she said to Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina after the verdict.

2026: the Supreme Court closes the first case

Trump appealed both verdicts. The Second Circuit upheld the $5 million award on December 30, 2024, and the $83.3 million award on September 8, 2025. Before the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers argued that the trial judge “erroneously allowed testimony about multiple decades-old, unverified and unrelated allegations.” The justices declined to take the case on June 29, 2026, and on August 17 they denied his request to reconsider, without comment. Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said the verdict “is now final and cannot be challenged in any court.” In July, Carroll was paid about $5.6 million, interest included.

The bigger case is still open. On July 28, 2026, Trump’s private lawyers and the Justice Department filed separate petitions asking the Supreme Court to review the $83.3 million judgment. Trump argues that what he said in 2019 is covered by presidential immunity; the Justice Department argues that the United States, not Trump personally, should be the defendant. As of this update the court has not ruled on either. That is the date worth watching, and I will be watching it.

The perjury report, and the film

In late May 2026, CNN and then the Associated Press reported that federal prosecutors in Chicago had opened an investigation into whether Carroll lied in her civil litigation. The reports focus on her deposition statement that no one else was paying her legal fees; it later came out that a group backed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman helped fund the case. The AP’s source was a person speaking anonymously, the Justice Department has not announced anything, and no charges have been reported. On this site, an anonymous source is a reason to keep reading, not a conclusion. Trump, for his part, has called her allegations a “made-up scam.”

Meanwhile, Carroll wrote her own account of the trials, Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President, which debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times best-seller list in June 2025. Ivy Meeropol’s documentary Ask E. Jean premiered at Telluride in 2025 and reached US theaters in May 2026 through Abramorama, after a distributor stopped answering the filmmakers’ calls. Her first answer to the documentary idea was “I’d rather eat my shoe.” On screen she admits that for years, “I told women to suck it up and just get on with it.” She made the film anyway, which is roughly the plot of the last seven years.

Carroll at home in upstate New York, in Ivy Meeropol's documentary Ask E. Jean. — Carroll at home in upstate New York, in Ivy Meeropol’s documentary Ask E. Jean. Photo: Abramorama, Ask E. Jean trailer (still)

Watch

My take

Carroll’s advice column was built on one idea: stop waiting for permission. Seven years, two juries and two Supreme Court orders later, the $5 million verdict is final and paid, and the $83.3 million one waits for the justices. Whatever they do this fall, the advice columnist has already answered the question she used to put to her readers. She did not suck it up.

Sources

Fact check

Rumor / Reality

The rumor

A Justice Department perjury investigation into Carroll: reported by CNN and AP via an anonymous source, not announced by the department, no charges.
Whether the Supreme Court will take the $83.3 million case: undecided.
Trump calls the allegations a "made-up scam"; two juries and the appeals court found otherwise.

What we know

May 9, 2023: jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, $5 million.
January 26, 2024: second jury awarded $83.3 million for defamation.
Second Circuit upheld both verdicts (Dec 30, 2024 and Sept 8, 2025).
Supreme Court declined review of the $5 million case on June 29, 2026 and denied rehearing on Aug 17, 2026.
Petitions on the $83.3 million verdict (No. 26-141 and the Justice Department petition) filed July 28, 2026.

Written by

Nora Vance Fact-check editor

“If it is not in the "what we know" column, we do not repeat it.”