E. Jean Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump for the president’s comments denying the journalist’s claims that he raped her in a department store in the 1990s.

“Decades ago, the now President of the United States raped me,” Carroll, an Elle columnist and former "Saturday Night Live" writer, said in a statement released Monday. “When I had the courage to speak out about the attack, he defamed my character, accused me of lying for personal gain, even insulted my appearance. No woman should have to face this.”


The 28-page lawsuit filed on Monday outlined the alleged rape, citing Trump’s responses as libelous and “abhorrent.”

“Nobody in this nation is above the law,” Carroll's lawsuit states. “Nobody is entitled to conceal acts of sexual assault behind a wall of defamatory falsehoods and deflections. The rape of a woman is a violent crime; compounding that crime with acts of malicious libel is abhorrent. Yet that is what Defendant Donald J. Trump did to Plaintiff E. Jean Carroll.”

“I have no idea who this women is,” Trump said after the initial accusation. “This is a woman who’s also accused other men of things, as you know. It is a totally false accusation.”

Trump also claimed he “never met this person,” despite a 1987 photo of the two at a party together.


Trump’s denials of both the rape and having known Carroll — as well as his peddling of conspiracy theories about her working with the Democratic Party to carry out a political agenda — show a “reckless disregard for their truth or falsity," the filing claims.

Carroll first published her account of the assault in New York Magazine in June as a preview of her book release, recounting an incident 23 years ago in which Trump purportedly pushed her up against a dressing room wall at Bergdorf Goodman and raped her. Trump rejected the accusation, saying "she's not my type."

On Monday, the White House again rejected the allegations made by Carroll in the New York Magazine article, which Trump previously decried as a “dying publication trying to prop itself up by peddling fake news.”

“Let me get this straight – Ms. Carroll is suing the President for defending himself against false allegations?” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an email to POLITICO in response to a request for comment on the lawsuit. “I guess since the book did not make any money she’s trying to get paid another way. The story she used to try and sell her trash book never happened, period. Her version of events is not even feasible if you’ve ever tried on clothing in a dressing room of a crowded department store. The lawsuit is frivolous and the story is a fraud – just like the author.”


In an MSNBC interview in June, Carroll said she would not pursue legal action against Trump, stating it would be “disrespectful” to women who face sexual violence at the southern border. Five months later, Carroll changed her mind.

“This lawsuit is not only about me,” Carroll said in the statement. “I am filing this on behalf of every woman who has ever been harassed, assaulted, silenced, or spoken up only to be shamed, fired, ridiculed and belittled. It’s for every woman who can’t speak up because she’ll lose the job she needs to support her three kids. No person in this country should be above the law – including the President.”

The lawsuit cites the cultural shift that took place in 2017 on the heels of reports outlining allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein, and the flood of stories about other powerful men that followed. "It suddenly seemed possible that even Trump could be held to account," it says.

The lawsuit is similar to filings made by other women accusing Trump of sexual misconduct.

Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s reality show, “The Apprentice,” also filed a defamation suit after he rejected her claims that he twice forced himself on her in 2007: once in a job interview at Trump Tower in Manhattan and once during a business meeting in Los Angeles.

Trump also found himself in a legal battle with adult film star Stormy Daniels, who was paid not to disclose an alleged affair with Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Daniels received $130,000 in hush money from Michael Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer at the time. The libel case was thrown out last October by a federal judge, who ordered Daniels to pay Trump’s legal fees in the case.

