The saga of E. Jean Carroll's allegations against Donald Trump reads like a script from a Hollywood courtroom drama — fitting, perhaps, given the persistent claims that her story was cribbed from one. The case remains a flashpoint in the ongoing narrative of "lawfare" against Trump, with his legal team escalating the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. This blog piece dissects the core elements: the factual gaps in Carroll's account, the evidentiary controversies that propelled her to victory, the dubious timing enabled by New York law changes, and the intriguing parallels to a 2012 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. While juries have sided with Carroll, delivering a $5 million verdict for sexual abuse and defamation in 2023 (followed by an $83.3 million defamation award in 2024), the absence of corroboration and the spectre of political orchestration raise profound questions about justice in a polarised age. Trump's Supreme Court petition, filed on November 10, 2025, calls it a "facially implausible" hoax propped up by judicial errors, a claim that demands scrutiny.
The Story: Holes Larger Than a Bergdorf Goodman Fitting Room
At its heart, Carroll's narrative is a "he said, she said" tale from the mid-1990s: a chance encounter with Trump in the lingerie section of Manhattan's Bergdorf Goodman escalates into an assault in a dressing room. She describes Trump pushing her against the wall, raping her, and fleeing after she fights back with a hanger! No police report was filed at the time. No witnesses emerged. No surveillance footage exists from an era when such tech was rudimentary at best. Carroll couldn't even nail down the date — floating 1995 or 1996, a vagueness that Trump's attorney Will Scharf lambasted in 2024 as "utterly implausible."
Forensic evidence? Zilch. Carroll's team tested a dress she claimed to have worn during the incident for DNA, but the results were inconclusive — Trump's lawyers noted in appeals that no "confirmatory DNA" linked him to the scene. Her two closest confidantes, Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin, testified she confided in them shortly after, but that's testimonial hearsay at best, not hard proof. As Trump's current petition to the Supreme Court argues, "No physical or DNA evidence corroborates Carroll's story. There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation." Serious allegations demand more than recollection; they require substantiation. Yet, Carroll prevailed, twice, in federal court under Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
Critics, including Trump surrogate Justin D. Smith, label this a "politically motivated hoax." Carroll's 2019 New York Magazine cover story — "This is what I was wearing 23 years ago when Donald Trump attacked me" — featured her in the infamous Donna Karan dress. But fact-checkers and Trump's team pointed out a wrinkle: that specific dress model wasn't manufactured until after the alleged incident, casting doubt on her timeline. Carroll dismissed it as a "replacement" dress, but the inconsistency lingers like an ill-fitting garment.
Evidentiary Rulings: "Indefensible" or Fair Game?
Trump's Supreme Court filing zeroes in on what his lawyers call a "series of indefensible evidentiary rulings" by Judge Kaplan. Under Federal Rule of Evidence 415, which allows evidence of similar sexual misconduct in civil cases, Kaplan permitted testimony from two other women — Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff — who accused Trump of assault decades earlier. Trump's team argues this was "highly inflammatory propensity evidence," prejudicing the jury by painting him as a serial abuser rather than letting Carroll's claims stand alone. The infamous Access Hollywood tape was also played, which his petition deems irrelevant to a 1990s incident.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the $5 million verdict in December 2024, ruling the evidence "properly admitted" and the damages "fair and reasonable." A separate panel affirmed the $83.3 million defamation award in September 2025, rejecting Trump's immunity claims for statements made as president. But Trump's lawyers contend these rulings conflict with other circuits' stricter interpretations of Rule 415, creating a circuit split ripe for Supreme Court intervention. If Kaplan "warped federal evidence rules to bolster Carroll's implausible, unsubstantiated assertions," as the petition claims, it could unravel both judgments, and signal deeper rot in politicised trials.
The Adult Survivors Act: A Tailored Window for Vengeance?
No discussion of this case's flaws is complete without the Adult Survivors Act (ASA), a 2022 New York law that opened a one-year window for civil suits over decade-old sexual misconduct claims, bypassing statutes of limitations. As New York Magazine noted at the time, Carroll filed immediately upon its enactment — November 24, 2022 — targeting Trump specifically. Critics, including Trump's team, see this as "changing the rules solely to get Trump," a Democratic-engineered trap in a blue state. Without the ASA, her suit would have been dead on arrival.
This isn't abstract: The law was spearheaded by Democrats amid the #MeToo wave, and its timing aligns suspiciously with Trump's 2024 campaign. Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge), has defended it as justice delayed, not denied. But when paired with zero contemporaneous evidence, it smells like retroactive lawfare. As one X user quipped recently, "Democrats changed the law in New York so E. Jean Carroll could sue decades later and then used that civil verdict to brand Trump a 'rapist.'" This underscores how procedural tweaks can weaponise courts against political foes.
The Law & Order Connection: Coincidence or Crib Sheet?
Some have long whispered that Carroll's tale was lifted from television — specifically, Season 13, Episode 11 of Law & Order: SVU, titled "Theater Tricks," aired January 10, 2012. In it, a character recounts a "rape fantasy" role-play gone awry in the lingerie department of — you guessed it — Bergdorf Goodman's dressing room. The parallels are uncanny: the exact location, the playful banter turning violent, even the era's vagueness. Trump's Supreme Court petition revives this, stating, "Carroll's allegations are a story that precisely matches the plotline from an episode of one of admittedly her favorite TV shows, 'Law & Order.'"
Carroll, a self-professed Law & Order fan (though she claims to skip SVU for its violence), addressed this in 2019: "It tickled me to death... It's a great, huge coincidence." Her friends' accounts predate the episode by decades, she insists, deflating fabrication claims. During 2023 cross-examination, Trump's lawyer Joe Tacopina grilled her on an email where a reader flagged the similarity; she replied, "This happens all the time with 'Law & Order' stories." SVU producers have dismissed any link, calling it "no correlation — none whatsoever."
X posts from 2025 echo it: "Her fake story about Trump assaulting her is word for word an episode of Law and Order, SVU from 2012." Another: "E Jean Carroll used a sub plot from a law and order SVU episode as her trump rape story." Scott Adams, the late Dilbert creator, amplified it in 2023, suggesting subconscious influence. Fact-checkers like FactCheck.org label it a debunked conspiracy, but in a case bereft of evidence, such "stunning coincidences" fuel scepticism. If not plagiarism, why does her story mirror a fictional script so neatly?
The Supreme Court Gamble: Sanity or Deeper Crisis?
Trump's filing isn't just an appeal; it's a referendum on whether civil courts can be battlegrounds for partisan vendettas. His team seeks certiorari on evidentiary grounds, arguing the Second Circuit's leniency harms due process. Carroll's side, via Roberta Kaplan, predicts dismissal: "We do not believe... any legal issues... merit review by the United States Supreme Court." The justices might grant review to clarify Rule 415 or punt, letting the verdicts stand as precedent.
If the Court tosses it, vindication for Trump and a blow to #BelieveAllWomen absolutism. If not, as the original post warns, "we have much, much bigger problems." This isn't about one dressing room scuffle; it's about eroding trust in institutions. Carroll's wins, built on propensity evidence and a tailored law, may symbolise empowerment for survivors — or a cautionary tale of justice untethered from facts. Historians will judge: eternal shame for a "Biden regime" witch hunt, or a overdue reckoning? With no DNA, no witnesses, and a TV plot doppelgänger, the holes in Carroll's cheese-slice story suggest the former.