E Jean Carroll had to be restrained by her lawyer as she gleefully outlined how she plans to spend her $83.3 million libel award against Donald Trump.
The author had promised to help other victims with her multimillion-dollar payout, but had a more mundane wish list when interviewed by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.
“First thing we're going to do, Rachel, is go shopping,” she said. “We’re getting completely new wardrobes, new shoes, what do you want?” Penthouse? It's yours, Rachel!' “That’s a joke,” attorney Shawn Crowley laughed nervously, sitting next to her.
The Republican presidential candidate has insisted he will appeal Friday's award, which he called “absolutely ridiculous.”
“They took away all First Amendment rights,” he wrote on Truth Social, “THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”
E Jean Carroll appeared on MSNBC yesterday with attorneys Roberta Kaplan (left) and Shawn Crowley (right) after her groundbreaking legal victory over Donald Trump
“Rachel, what do you want?” Penthouse? It's yours, Rachel!' Carroll told host Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow asks E. Jean Carroll what she will do with “Trump's money” to support “women's rights.”
Carroll says she and Maddow are “going to go shopping, get all new wardrobes and new shoes…Rachel, what do you want, Penthouse?”
Her lawyer nervously says, “This is a joke”: pic.twitter.com/5LAx5xU5Uy
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) January 30, 2024
The former president has insisted he will appeal Friday's award, which he described as “absolutely ridiculous.”
Carroll's outburst sparked a scathing reaction from MAGA supporters.
“Talk to a real rape victim.” They never laugh at anything about the rape or the conviction. “This is disgusting @MSNBC,” one Trump fan wrote.
“The joke will be on them if Trump appeals and wins,” another MAGA supporter wrote.
“We know the trial was a hoax and a sham and she is treating it like it is because she knows she is a liar and a sham,” said another.
A jury in Manhattan agreed that the former president defamed the former Elle Magazine columnist when he called her a “complete idiot” with a “made-up story” after an earlier court found that he killed her in the dressing room of a newspaper in 1996 had sexually abused the department store.
He claimed he had never met her and kept saying she wasn't his “type.”
But the jury concluded that Trump acted out of “hatred, malice or malice” when he denied Carroll’s allegations in public statements and also called them “fiction.”
And it ordered him to pay Carroll $7.3 million for “emotional harm,” $11 million in “reputational damages” and a massive $65 million in “punitive damages.”
On Sunday, she told ABC's Good Morning America that she planned to spend the money on “something Donald Trump hates.”
“If it causes him pain when I give money for certain things, that's my intention,” she added, suggesting creating a “fund for the women who were sexually abused by Donald Trump.”
E. Jean Carroll, in white, is seen leaving the courthouse in Manhattan on Friday evening with Kaplan and Crowley
At the beginning of the closing arguments on Friday, Trump left the courtroom (next to Habba in the blue).
And she described him as “nothing” as she recalled seeing him in court for the first time since the sexual assault nearly 30 years ago.
“He's like a walrus snorting, like a rhino flapping his hands, he's not there, that was the surprising thing for me,” she said.
“I was terrified, I was just a bag of sweat as we prepared for the trial and three or four days before the trial I had a real breakdown,” she added.
“I couldn’t speak anymore and I couldn’t carry on, I was so scared.”
Donald Trump defense attorney Alina Habba said she was “proud” to defend the former president, who was swept up in the justice system following the $83.3 million verdict against E. Jean Carroll
“But strangely enough, I looked out and he was nothing.
“He was a phantom.” It was the people around him who gave him power, he himself was nothing.
“It was an amazing discovery for me; We don't need to be afraid of him.'
Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, was herself threatened with prison during the trial after clashing with Judge Lewis Kaplan, saying the fact that the judge worked at the same law firm in the 1990s as Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, was unrelated an “insane conflict”. Interest'.
“Don’t twist it,” Habba told reporters in court.
“We see a violation of our justice system, ladies and gentlemen.”
In its latest financial statements for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021, it was reported that the ex-president had access to $294 million in cash or cash equivalents.
However, a judge's ruling is expected soon in his ongoing civil white collar fraud case over allegedly misrepresenting the values of his business assets, for which prosecutors have sought a $370 million penalty.
Trump criticized the verdict minutes after the jury awarded him $83.3 million in damages
Carroll, 80, was full of praise for her two lawyers who appeared at her side yesterday, even though they had only asked for a third of the amount awarded by the jury.
“We raised our flag,” she said.
“We made a statement that things will be different, that there will be a new way of doing things in this country because of this indestructible legal team.”
“I think that bodes well for the future.”