Old E. Jean Carroll clip roasting Trump goes viral after $5.6M payout

After writer E. Jean Carroll on Tuesday successfully collected over $5.6 million that she won in her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump, an old clip of her recounting the trial proceedings is going viral. In the video, Carroll, who won two cases against Trump, securing sums of over $5 million and $83 million respectively, described to the Daily Beast podcast the weird antics of the President in the courtroom. 

Court records on Monday showed that the $5 million jury award, plus interest, was transferred from an account where it had been held in escrow since the 2023 verdict to Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, the Associated Press reported. Following the news, Carroll's clip from last year began circulating on social media, where she blasted Trump for his weird antics. "I don't understand how people can be afraid of a fat, elderly man who wears apricot makeup, his hair done up like Tippi Hedren in The Birds, and sits in a courtroom and moans and groans and complains and snorts," she told host Joanna Coles.

Recounting the trial, she shared that Trump left the jury "mesmerized" by his weird behavior and questionable odor. Trump, who was campaigning to become the Republican nominee at the time of the trial, was visibly anxious in the courtroom, according to Carroll. "He never sat still, and he talked the entire time within earshot of the jury. He belittled Alina Habba, his own attorney. He would spit as he was talking. He didn't smell so good," she said. 

Carroll further shared that in the end, when her lawyer, Kalpan, made her powerful closing argument in the case, he stood up "with steam coming off his back and hot air blowing out his ears" because she was asking the jury how much it would take to make him stop. "She drove him so crazy, he stood up in the courtroom and left," Carroll added, claiming that when a man is innocent, he doesn't do what Trump did. "He turned tail and stormed out of the courtroom. He lost right at that second. He couldn't have looked more guilty," she said.

The trial was for the $83.3 million defamation case in which she accused Trump of defaming her by calling her a liar over the sexual assault allegations she made against him. While she secured a victory in that case as well, the payment was put on hold by a lower court until Trump's plea in the Supreme Court was either heard or dismissed. However, Carroll, in a separate case, secured the $5.6 million payment after the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump's appeal. 

Carroll told NBC News that she plans to use the money to fund her retirement, but she had previously expressed that if she received the $83.3 million defamation award, she would give it away. Carroll accepted the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' order to pause the payment on condition that Trump would raise the bond by $7.46 million to account for interest that would accrue on her award during further legal proceedings.