As a lawyer-turned-journalist, the question I get asked most outside of work is, “Will Donald Trump ever be held accountable?” That’s a tough one to answer, in part because the former president has been accused of a wide range of misconduct, including cooking the books of his real estate empire and willfully hoarding classified documents. And, of course, there’s his lowest low: Jan. 6, 2021.
But yes, I think Trump will be held accountable, and as early as next week. It just won’t play out in the way many might have imagined. It won’t be because of the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment, the New York attorney general’s quarter-billion-dollar civil fraud case, or any of the ongoing criminal investigations led by special counsel Jack Smith or Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis.
Don’t get me wrong: Each of those people might succeed in holding Trump legally — or even criminally — accountable one day. But the person most likely to hold Trump to account now is Miss Indiana University 1963, a woman celebrated for dispensing advice to the lovelorn even as she suppressed her own apparent trauma.
Her name is E. Jean Carroll. She is one of at least two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. And starting Tuesday, her yearslong fight to make Trump liable for allegedly assaulting and defaming her will be tried in a Manhattan federal court.
Before Trump was president, his reputed extramarital liaisons were not just well known, but were almost part of his “playboy” image — and his unexpected appeal to voters. And when we first saw the “Access Hollywood” tape — in which Trump boasted that as a “star,” he could “do anything” to whomever he wanted — it did not destroy Trump, as some expected. Why? Because many voters chalked it up to Trump being Trump: offensive but not an offender. Carroll, on the other hand, could not.
Instead, the #MeToo movement, sparked by The New York Times’ reporting about…
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