E. Jean Carroll publishes 'top secret' book revealing Trump trial 'high jinks'
E. Jean Carroll has secretly written a new book chronicling her court battles with President Donald Trump.
“Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President,” is due out on Tuesday, just days after an appeals court ruled that it wouldn't reconsider its ruling upholding a $5 million civil judgment against the president in a civil lawsuit alleging he sexually abused the writer in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.
"The behind-the-scenes goings-on at those two trials were so funny and so hilarious," Carroll told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I had found myself in the middle of a high comedy, surrounded by characters that not even John Grisham could have created. It was just too juicy. We did not want the White House to hear about it, and so they, the people at St. Martin's [Publishing Group] locked copies of this book in their offices. I didn't have a copy of the book until two days ago, it's the first time I ever laid hands [on it]. It was a top-secret job. I think we got away with it."
Carroll said battling the once and future president in court should probably be considered as serious matter, but she saw plenty of comedy in her situation.
"The characters alone – we have judge [Lewis] Kaplan, a steel rod of a man, looks like God on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, right?" she said. "Conservative, no nonsense, and yet gets off one-liners like Stephen Colbert. We have Trump attorney] Joe Tacopina, built like Popeye, got a voice like a shotgun in a gravel pit. You know, just. dresses in $6,000 suits.
"We have Alina Habba, esquire, Trump's most beautiful attorney. Cheekbones like tulip bulbs, right? Eyes like a baby seal, gorgeous, smart, you know. Deliciously arrogant and yet didn't know diddly-squat about the law, and then we have my attorney, Roberta Kaplan, who was born with a lust for battle. You put all these characters together, you have hijinks, you have humor, you have dead serious, dead serious days. We saw in that courtroom where, by the way, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse in the first trial, so dead serious. But on the whole, uplifting because we can see what really goes on in a courtroom."
Carroll rejected the notion that she was trying to cash in by publishing a book about the president
"I'm an old journalist," she said. "There was no way, no way I could help myself but to take note of what actually was.going on. Would you like to hear what it's like sitting right in front of Donald Trump? We were so close in the courtroom, if I lean back and reach my hand, I could have grabbed him by the hair, so I could hear everything he was saying. I could hear the snorts and the whines and the, and the bawling and the spitting and the hissing and his arms going like this on the desk, and I was, I thought to myself, 'Oh my God, what if the jury is hearing this? And I turned and looked at the jury and they're, like, petrified with delight. I mean, so what? I'm not going to write about that?"
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