“E. Jean Carroll Hopes Her Explosive Telluride Doc Will ‘Finish Off’ Donald Trump”
That was a blaring headline in Variety from this past weekend.
It doesn’t matter what is in this documentary or if anyone ever sees it. It will not finish off Trump.
Here is why:
I spent the last year examining the six major “lawfare” cases against President Trump in between his two presidential administrations, and the E. Jean Carroll case was easily the most absurd on its face.
E. Jean Carroll is seen outside State Supreme Court on March 4, 2020, in New York. (Alec Tabak/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Key details: in 2019, advice columnist and former Saturday Night Live writer E. Jean Carroll wrote an account in New York magazine alleging that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in 1995. Or maybe it was 1996. She can’t exactly remember. (I regard her inability to remember this detail strike one against her credibility.)
The details of the former gossip columnist’s story are truly stranger than fiction. (Read into my last statement what you will; Carroll has been known to sue for defamation and find endless financial resources to do so.) They are simultaneously maddening and hilarious. I give a full accounting in my New York Times bestselling book, Breaking the Law, but here are key reasons why E. Jean Carroll may get a lot of attention and make a little money, but she will never finish off Donald J. Trump.
The Case Was Concocted by George Conway and Funded by Reid Hoffman
Carroll waited from 1995 (or was it 1996?) until 2019 to tell her alleged story. She opted not to introduce these allegations during many favorable news environments such as the Bill Clinton sex scandal, Trump’s first presidential run, and #MeToo. She finally chose to make claims against Trump in 2019 while she was promoting a book. Yet, I am convinced I’ve uncovered the real reason why she waited until this precise moment: the urging of George Conway.
A television screen shot shows attorney George Conway during live CNN coverage of the President Donald Trump impeachment trial on February 5, 2020. (Robert Alexander/Getty Images)
Yes, the person who orchestrated the entire case was the professional anti-Trump legal pundit and bitter ex-husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. George Conway coached Carroll into pursuing a civil trial rather than criminal litigation. Carroll would cop to this on the witness stand. He would go on to champion the case in the press.
Conway isn’t the only familiar anti-Trump name associated with the Carroll cases. The Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman bankrolled Carroll’s efforts. Hoffman hates Trump, saying he would “spend as much as I possibly can and it takes” to beat him. And he just so happens to have been the one shoveling coal into E. Jean Carroll’s engine. Carroll’s legal team, led by #MeToo mega-lawyer Roberta Kaplan, disclosed that they were funded by American Future Republic, a nonprofit primarily backed by Hoffman.
Reid Hoffman attends a conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton at 92NY on January 28, 2025, in New York City. (Dominik Bindl/Getty Images)
All of this reveals the suit was political in nature, which violates due process and equal protection provisions in our U.S. Constitution.
The Half-Penis Rape
Carroll’s account of the alleged events strains credulity, to put it mildly.
Carroll claimed that Trump followed her into a fitting room at Bergdorg’s, shoved her against a wall, pulled down her pants, and forced “his fingers around my private area.” (Did he grab her by her private area, perhaps? This sounds a lot like the language Trump used on the infamous Access Hollywood tape.)
Next, Trump “thrusts his penis halfway—or completely, I’m not certain—inside me,” she claimed.
Ah, the old half-penis rape . . . that’s definitely a real thing that men do.
“I do not believe he ejaculates,” she said.
Thanks for that attentive eye to detail, Jean.
From her account of events, we are to believe that there were no other customers around, there were no employees nearby, the dressing room was left unlocked, and Carroll didn’t scream.
There were no eye witnesses. There was no surveillance video.
And, of course, Trump only used… half.
Make of this series of claims what you will.
E. Jean Carroll departs a Manhattan federal court on January 26, 2024, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The Dress
In various interviews and in her trial testimony, Carroll emphasized her wardrobe during the alleged event.
“I am wearing a pair of sturdy black patent-leather four-inch Barneys high heels, which puts my height around six-one, and I try to stomp his foot,” she said. She re-created this exact look for what I’m sure her handlers thought was a badass cover photo that graced New York magazine in 2019, the year she publicly accused Trump.
She claims that she was wearing a “black wool Donna Karan coatdress.” Trump’s team (among others) have claimed the dress wasn’t even made at the time.
Carroll also said, “The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening.”
Unlaundered?
Since the dress was unwashed, surely she offered it up to the authorities so it could be checked for Trump’s DNA, right? Apparently not.
“The dress was great,” Trump told me in an interview in 2025. “The dress was a Monica Lewinsky–type dress. Then when they found out there was nothing on the dress, so we wanted the dress, and the judge said ‘nope.’ We’re not gonna let you show it.”
Trump is correct that Judge Lewis Kaplan would not allow for it to be admitted as evidence. (I recently called on the Trump administration to investigate Judge Kaplan.) This would be a recurring theme of the trial.
There is a dress that apparently is in Carroll’s possession that could prove Trump did something to her, but she won’t produce it.
Let that sink it.
In this courtroom sketch, Judge Lewis Kaplan, left, presides, as E. Jean Carroll, right, is cross-examined by Donald Trump’s defense attorney in Federal Court in New York City on April 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams)
Her Story Was a ‘Law & Order’ Episode, Literally
Her narrative about the events is—not a joke—almost identical to the plot of a 2012 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In that episode, titled “Theatre and Tricks,” one of the characters fantasizes about being raped in the lingerie section of Bergdorf Goodman, exactly where Carroll alleges she was raped by Trump.
Carroll testified that she was aware of the episode but hadn’t seen it. Yet she claimed she is a fan of Law & Order—but not Law & Order: SVU, which she said was “too violent.”
If Carroll hadn’t seen that episode, it might have been because she was spending her time watching The Apprentice, which she raved about on the witness stand.
E. Jean Carroll, right, is questioned by her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, center, in Federal Court in New York on Jan. 17, 2024. Donald Trump is seated, left, with his defense attorney Alina Habba, as Judge Lewis Kaplan presides. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams)
She Was Obsessed with Sex, Especially at Bergorf’s
She writes about sex for a living and joked about sex at Bergdorf’s in a 1993 column for Elle.
She traffics in the explicit, professionally, writing and tweeting frequently about “unusual” sexual practices. “How do you know your ‘unwanted sexual advance’ is unwanted, until you advance it?” she tweeted in 2015. Another tweet from 2010: “Sex Tip I Learned From My Dog: When in heat, chase the male until he collapses with exhaustion . . . then jump him!”
You can make the case she’s just being provocative and edgy, but that certainly doesn’t help her credibility.
Bergdorf Goodman department store is in New York City on Nov. 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)
She May or May Not Be Completely Nuts
Her mental state is particularly relevant because there were no other eye witnesses, so the cases (there were two) hinge on her credibility. It is a fact that E. Jean Carrol is an incredibly odd person, to say the least. As I reported in Breaking the Law, she had a cat named Vagina (Vagina T. Fireball, to be exact) and she had a dog named Tits. Yet, Judge Kaplan, a committed leftist, kept this information out of the courtroom.
Why did he do that?
Carroll lives alone in the woods in a home she has dubbed “The Mouse House.” She gave it that name because of the rodents that live there. She decorated the outside of her property with garbage hung from a string. As of a few years ago, she drove a polka-dotted Toyota Prius. She paints rocks.
When asked about her daily routine, she said that every afternoon when she wakes up (yes, a woman in her seventies says she wakes up at noon) and screams to the heavens, “Thank God I don’t have children.”
It’s hard to disagree with that sentiment.
E. Jean Carroll at her home in New York state on June 21, 2019. (Eva Deitch for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
E. Jean Carroll visits the SiriusXM Studios on July 11, 2019, in New York City. (Noam Galai/Getty Images)
Was It Even ‘Rape’?
E. Jean Carroll could never decide whether or not to use the “R” word when it came to Trump.
At first, Carroll did not say that she had been raped in court or in media appearances. Her civil complaint does not mention rape. In fact, it focused only on defamation, as the statute of limitations had run out. The word “rape” does not appear in the complaint.
In fact, a bizarre interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN crescendoed to a discussion of why she assiduously avoids calling what Trump did “rape,” even though she claims he shoved his penis (or was it half his penis?) into her. She prefers the word “fight,” which she tried to explain as follows:
CARROLL: The word rape carries so many sexual connotations. This was not. This was not sexual. It just, it hurt. You know…
COOPER: I think most people think of rape as, I mean, it is a violent assault. It is not a sexual…
CARROLL: I think most people think of rape as being sexy.
COOPER: Let’s take a short break.
CARROLL: Think of the fantasies.
So, she is saying here that was penetrated against her will, which is a “fight” and not a “rape,” because rapes are . . . “sexy.”
Judge Kaplan did not allow for the Cooper interview to be admitted as evidence in court.
She Really Wasn’t His Type
At the time of the alleged incident, Trump was 49 or 50 years old, slightly younger than Carroll. He was married at the time to the gorgeous Marla Maples, who was in her early 30s. He had a massive real estate empire and was a popular fixture in the New York social scene.
Yet Carroll, this judge, and the media insisted that he risked all that to put (half of?) his penis into this 52-year-old woman in a department store.
Trump has been known to say that E. Jean Carroll wasn’t “his type.”
From everything we know about Trump, this certainly checks out.
E. Jean Carroll, left, and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan attend the Time 100 Gala on April 25, 2024, in New York. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
***
I spoke to Trump about this case a number of times while researching Breaking the Law, and he said that he believed the case was over as soon as the Manhattan judge and jury were set.
He also told me that he thought the real point of the case was to try “to embarrass me before the election.”
All that checks out too.
And in the end, Carroll, Conway, Hoffman, and Kaplan won the case but lost the election.
Now they are coming back to “finish off” Donald Trump with a film.
If the public bothers to learn even a few of these details I lay above and in Breaking the Law, it won’t amount to more than another empty attempt to embarrass Trump while bagging cash.
This article was adapted from portions of Breaking the Law.
Breaking the Law: Exposing the Weaponization of America’s Legal System Against Donald Trump, which has been hailed by President Trump as a “must read” book, is available in hardcover, eReader format, and as an audiobook read by the author himself.
Alex Marlow is the editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, a three-time New York Times bestselling author, and the host of “The Alex Marlow Show” podcast produced weekdays by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. You can follow Alex on Facebook, Instagram, and X at @AlexMarlow.
