On Tuesday, I walked into the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse in Manhattan, a gleaming marble tower where this lawyer-turned-journalist spent considerable time over the last 20 years — but never quite like this.
That’s because the opening statements in the civil trial for writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation and battery lawsuit against Donald Trump were unlike anything I’ve seen in a federal courthouse. It was a searing, vivid account of a nearly 30-year-old alleged sexual assault that could easily devolve into a “he said/she said” but for intrepid lawyering, fortuitous photos and videos, and Trump’s own spigot of speech.
While legendary litigator Roberta Kaplan has been the face of Carroll’s case, there are several other, less visible lawyers on her team with serious trial chops. And Carroll began her case with one of them, a woman named Shawn Crowley, who not only spent several years as a prosecutor in the same courthouse, but also was a law clerk to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is presiding over the trial.
Carroll, born in 1943 and raised to ‘grin and bear it,’ chose silence, Crowley alleged, until ‘silence became impossible.’
Crowley started with the basic allegations: Trump sexually assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room while on a shopping trip to find a gift for a woman Trump knew.
When Carroll confided in two friends shortly thereafter, they gave her opposite advice, Crowley alleged. One allegedly explained to Carroll that she had been raped and urged her to call the police. Days later, the other friend allegedly warned that Trump would “ruin her life and her career” if she spoke.
Carroll, born in 1943 and raised to “grin and bear it,” chose silence, Crowley alleged, until “silence became impossible” in the wake of The New York Times’ Harvey Weinstein reporting, which set in motion the #MeToo movement.
Having newly embarked on a book project about women’s experiences with men, Carroll was…
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