Writer E. Jean Carroll has weighed in on President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming return to the White House.
Carroll won two lawsuits against Trump over her claim that he raped her at a New York City department store in the 1990s. He was found liable for defamation and sexual abuse, ordered to pay Carroll a total of $88.3 million. Trump denies Carroll’s claim and has since appealed.
On Wednesday, within hours of the president-elect defeating Vice President Kamala Harris to secure a second term, Carroll expressed disappointment on social media that her warnings about Trump appeared to have little impact on the election’s outcome.
“I tried to tell you,” Carroll wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
In the days leading up to the election, Carroll shared posts to X that indicated she was voting “for the candidate who does not assault women” and reminding voters that Trump was ordered to pay her “because a unanimous federal jury found he lied.”
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Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump’s office via email on Wednesday night.
While Trump was found civilly liable for sexual abusing Carroll rather than raping her, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that the rape claim was “substantially true” while dismissing Trump’s 2023 defamation lawsuit against Carroll.
Trump’s appeals of the Carroll suits are still pending. In September, the former president and Carroll both attended a New York City hearing over a potential new trial, although the future of the case remains uncertain.
The president-elect’s return to power may have little bearing on the case since it is a civil rather than criminal matter. A 1997 Supreme Court ruling found that lawsuits against sitting presidents can proceed if they do not involve actions that the president took while in office.
However, Trump’s two pending criminal matters—felony election subversion cases in Georgia and at the federal level—are all but certain to be dismissed or at least set aside due to his election victory, since sitting presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted under the law.
Dave Aronberg, state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida, and a former Democratic state lawmaker, told Newsweek via direct message on X earlier on Wednesday that “Trump will not be put on trial in Georgia until his term ends, and maybe never depending on what the appellate courts say.”
Trump will likely be unable to reverse his unrelated 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records in New York, as presidents do not have the power to pardon themselves or anyone else for state crimes. He is due to be sentenced later this month.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr urged Attorney General Merrick Garland and state prosecutors to “respect the people’s decision” by immediately dismissing all cases against Trump during a Fox News appearance on Wednesday.
