Fact Check: Will the White House be listed on the sex offender registry after Trump's inauguration? E. Jean Carroll's 2023 verdict explained

Donald Trump, who defeated the Democrat candidate, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 presidential elections earlier this month, will move back into the White House in January 2025, following his presidential inauguration ceremony held on January 20.

As the 78-year-old is set to make his return to the White House, rumors about the White House being listed as the s*x offender registry have surfaced on social media. A particular X post claiming the same was uploaded on November 10 and has since gone viral, amassing over five million views and 26K reshares.

However, Snopes confirmed the rumor to be false. This is because only a criminal conviction requires someone to register as a s*x offender. And while the 78-year-old was found liable in the s*xual abuse lawsuit filed by the journalist E. Jean Carroll, it was a civil trial, not a criminal conviction.

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Jean Carroll filed a lawsuit against Trump in 2019

In November 2019, E. Jean Carroll - a journalist, author, and columnist - filed a civil defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump, alleging that the then-president had r*ped her in the 1990s. Carroll also claimed that the president tried to defame her by accusing her of lying for personal gain when she first spoke up about the incident in June 2019.

Two months later, Carroll's attorneys served the 78-year-old a request to provide his DNA sample for analysis, which was delayed on the president's part. After a long-drawn dispute over whether or not Trump was shielded by his position as the US President, Judge Lewis Kaplan - ruled that the 45th president wasn't a government employee as far as the case was concerned in October 2020.

The appeal was then taken to a Second Circuit Court of Appeal. Eventually, in March 2023, another ruling was signed by Judge Kaplan and stated that evidence beyond Trump's DNA - including his infamous Access Hollywood tapes as well as statements from 26 women about the 45th president abusing them - would be admissible in court.

Two months later, a jury found Donal Trump liable for s*ually abusing E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay the victim a compensation of $5 million for the same. Jean was awarded $2 million for the 45th president's s*xual abuse, $20,000 for punitive damages, $1 million for the president's defamation statement made in 2021, another $1.7 million for the harm to her reputation, and $280,000 in punitive damages.

The president hadn't attended the trial and didn't hear the verdict being read. However, the journalist's claim of being r*ped by 78-year-old was rejected by the jurors.

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Trump was accused of allegedly groping a former model in front of Jeffrey Epstein

While the civil defamation lawsuit Carroll had filed against the 45th president concluded in 2023, new revelations linked to his relationship with the late financier and s*x trafficker continue to emerge.

In October 2024, Stacey Williams, a former model, said in a CNN interview that she was groped by Trump in 1993. According to Williams, she was in a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein at the time, who had taken her to meet Trump at NYC's Trump Tower. She added:

"The second he was in front of me, he pulled me into him, and his hands were just on me and didn’t come off."

Stacey also told CNN that Trump greeted her with his hands on her all the time, while maintaining eye contact, smiling, and talking to Epstein. The former model added that she broke up with Jeffrey after the incident. The Trump campaign denied Williams' claims, calling it a "fake story contrived by the Harris campaign."

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Regardless of all the s*xual abuse claims that emerged against the 45th president in the recent past, the Republican candidate still ended up winning the presidential election, and will take office in the coming months.