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E Jean Carroll praised her legal team, including lawyers Shawn Crowley and Roberta Kaplan, while speaking to reporters outside the Manhattan courthouse on Friday, January 26, 2024. The praise comes in the wake of the jury awarding $83.3M to Carroll in the second defamation trial.
The jury awarded the substantial sum to Carroll after her attorneys, Roberta Kaplan and Shawn Crowley, urged jurors to punish Trump enough that he would stop incessant public statements smearing Carroll.
The recent verdict came nine months after E Jean Carroll, a prominent advice columnist for Elle magazine between 1993 and 2019, was awarded $5 million in damages after a jury found Trump liable for s*xual abuse and defamation in a separate lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed after a 2022 New York law allowed accusers a one-year window to sue their abusers outside the civil statute of limitations.
The current trial centered around the 2019 defamation lawsuit that stemmed from Trump calling Carroll a liar and a “Whack Job,” after she accused him of r*ping her in the mid-90s in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman Department Store.
The accusations were made in her forthcoming book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, an excerpt of which ran in New York magazine. At the time, the statute of limitations prevented her from suing for the assault.
E Jean Carroll's lawyer Shawn Crowley served as a law clerk to Trump defamation case Judge Lewis Kaplan
During the current defamation trial, E Jean Carroll's attorneys asserted that just a day after a jury awarded Carroll $5M following the s*xual abuse trial last year, the former president made additional defamatory statements denying the allegations.
In the closing argument of the current defamation trial, Shawn Crowley bashed Trump, accusing him of blatantly ignoring the earlier jury verdict and continuing to defame her client with impunity.
E. Jean Carroll was represented by two lawyers from the firm Kaplan Heckler and Fink. The lead attorney in the case, Roberta Kaplan, is a name partner at the firm. Meanwhile, Shawn Crowley, the second lawyer in the Trump defamation case, is an accomplished trial lawyer who is a partner at the Kaplan Heckler and Fink firm.
According to their website, Crowley, who received her J.D. from Columbia Law School, joined the firm after serving for more than six years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Shawn Crowley, who began her career in law began her career as an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, also served as a law clerk to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who presided over the Trump defamation trial.
In October 2023, Crowley was also named to City & State New York’s “2023 NYC 40 Under 40” list for her achievements and efforts in law.
E Jean Carroll's lawyer Shawn Crowley's closing argument explored
During the Closing argument in the E Jean Carroll Trial, Shawn Crowley called Trump a liar and blasted him for his lack of respect for the legal system. Crowley told the jury Trump walked out of the court after Roberta Kaplan accused the former president of s*xually abusing her client and continually defaming her character.
Crowley added the former president continued to flagrantly besmirch her character even after an earlier abuse trial jury had found him guilty of assault. She then asked the jury to consider if he acted out of malice while smearing her client.
“Ladies and gentlemen, his ‘truth’ is a lie. That may be how Donald Trump lives his life, but that’s not how it works in a court of law. The man who did these things to [Carroll], the man who s*xually assaulted her, he gets to do whatever he wants. He gets to ignore a jury verdict. You saw how he behaved during this trial. You saw him walk out of the courtroom while Ms. Kaplan was speaking.”
According to the New York Times, in the recent past, Trump also made more than 40 derisive posts about E Jean Carroll on his Truth Social website.
