By Patrick Smith - NBC News
E. Jean Carroll said Wednesday she was "overwhelmed with joy" for women across America after former President Donald Trump was found responsible for sexually abusing and defaming her.
Carroll, 79, said in an interview with Savannah Guthrie on NBC News' sister network TODAY Telemundo Wednesday morning that the court victory was not about millions awarded to her in damages, but about securing a victory for all women.
"I am overwhelmed, overwhelmed with joy and happiness for the women of this country," she said.
['I have absolutely no idea who this woman is': Here's how Trump reacts to his sexual assault verdict]
"It's not about money. It's about getting my name back," Carroll added.
A nine-person New York jury awarded the writer five million dollars in battery and defamation lawsuits, but said Trump was not responsible for Carroll's alleged rape at a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
Trump, who is campaigning for the 2024 presidency, has consistently denied Carroll's claims.
"I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS. THIS VERDICT IS AN EMBARRASSMENT — A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!" he wrote on his social media page, Truth Social, after the verdicts were announced.
For the first time in history a former US president is found responsible for sexual abuse
May 9, 202302:24
A Trump campaign spokesman said in a statement Tuesday: "This case will be appealed, and in the end we will win."
Carroll was with his lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, who said she was confident her client would collect Trump's damages and that her team had no grounds to appeal.
["I'm here because Trump raped me," writer E. Jean Carroll tells a courtroom]
"Rarely have I felt so confident about an appeal as in this case," she said.
Kaplan said there was "no doubt" the jury was sending a message by awarding multimillion-dollar damages and reaching a verdict within hours.
He also said Trump's decision not to testify had helped. "He didn't even bother to show up," Kaplan added.
Carroll also spoke of the toll the case has taken on him for more than 30 years.
"Before yesterday there was the concept of the perfect victim, who always screams, always reports to the police, always notes when it happened, and his life folds and is never supposed to be happy," he said.
"Yesterday we demolished that concept, it no longer exists. It's not so much about me, it's about all women," she said.
[Senate Republicans suggest sexual abuse verdict jeopardizes Trump's 2024 chances]
Asked what she would say to Trump if she could, Carroll said she approached her lawyer, Joe Tacopina, at the conclusion of the case and let him know.
"Tacopina reached out and I said, 'He did it and you know it.' So I had my chance," he recalled.
Several Republican senators have warned that Tuesday's verdict could hurt Trump's re-election chances. The verdict marks the first time a former president has been found liable for sexual misconduct in a civil case.
E. Jean Carroll leaves Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, May 9, 2023, in New York.Seth Wenig/AP
The outcome of the civil case has no criminal implications. The level of evidence needed to prove responsibility – over the preponderance of the evidence – was lower than in a criminal trial, in which a case must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Carroll filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court last year, alleging that Trump raped her in the fitting room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store near her Fifth Avenue home in 1995 or 1996. She first went public in 2019 in her book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal (Why do we need men? A modest proposal).
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Trump, first as president and then as a private citizen, called Carroll's account a fiction she invented to boost sales of the book, and he has said she is "not my type." He did not testify at trial, but parts of his October video statement were played for the jury.
The verdict had to be unanimous. It aired Tuesday after the jury deliberated for just three hours.
Asked whether Carroll had proved "by a preponderance of the evidence" that "Mr. Trump raped Mrs. Carroll," the jury of six men and three women checked the box that said "no."
The jury also found that Trump had defamed Carroll by calling his claims "hoax" and "scam," after deliberating for only about three hours. Carroll received just over two million dollars for the assault lawsuit and just under three million for the defamation lawsuit.
