While Donald Trump fumed in all-caps about being held liable on Tuesday for sexually abusing and defaming the journalist E. Jean Carroll, the response from Carroll’s camp was initially a bit more subdued.
“We’re very happy,” Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, told reporters as she left the courthouse.
In a statement released soon after, Carroll expanded on those initial sentiments, saying that the decision was “a victory not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”
“I filed this lawsuit against Donald Trump to clear my name and to get my life back,” she said. “Today, the world finally knows the truth.”
A New York jury in the civil suit found that Trump had in fact pushed Carroll against a wall in the fitting room of a Manhattan clothing store in 1996, but stopped short of saying what he did amounted to rape.
Trump now owes Carroll $5 million in damages. Kaplan, in her own statement, said the win shows “No one is about the law, not even a former President of the United States.”
