Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal

Reid Hoffman bankrolled E. Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuits against Donald Trump for sexual abuse (she won $5 million) and defamation (she won a staggering $83 million).

American Future Republic, a non-profit organization affiliated with Hoffman, disbursed a $7 million payment to Kaplan Hecker & Fink, the litigation law firm representing Carroll.

Hoffman and AFR are now under investigation.

According to Carroll, she ran into Trump near the revolving doors of Bergdorf Goodman. Trump recognized her as the Elle magazine advice columnist, and she recognized him as the famous real estate mogul.
The two engaged in what she described as fast-paced New York banter. Trump told her he was looking for a gift for a woman, and they walked through the store together, eventually ending up in the sixth-floor lingerie department, which was largely deserted at the time.

Carroll testified that the mood was comedic and playful.

Trump picked up a piece of lingerie (a lace bodysuit) and jokingly told her she should try it on.

Carroll joked back, telling Trump he should try it on.

Trump then dared her to try it on and directed her toward the dressing rooms.

Carroll testified that she went into the dressing room voluntarily.

Now — here is where the legal dispute lies.

Carroll claims that Trump proceeded to attack her and that she resisted.

She is admittedly a rape survivor who stated that she finds rape sexy. Of course she does not mean that she finds her own victimization sexy.

Although she intellectualized the statement as referring to the cultural conversation around rape, my analysis (personal, I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist) is that Carroll is subconsciously trying to own and control an uncontrollable situation which happened to her as a child.

I also think she has a repetition compulsion, writing about sex as a profession and explicitly putting herself into an ambiguous situation.

The basis for my thinking is that logically, if you go into a tiny women’s lingerie dressing room with a random famous stranger, you are acting out a fantasy. At a minimum you are sending mixed signals.

Trump did what he did (he did not rape her, although it was later defined that way by the judge in legal terms) and left.

Carroll resisted. The minute she indicated she did not want what was happening, Trump should have stopped. But she took an unstable man — Trump is known for his temper; she had no idea who he was or what he was about — and literally walked him into a “situation.”

This does not absolve Trump.

But Carroll did a dumb thing, which led to her being violated by a wealthy and prestigious man, and afterward (having lived out the original trauma via repetition compulsion) Carroll was extremely upset.

The record shows she called her friends and told them what happened.

Of course, Trump denied everything later and said she was a liar.

It is an odd, gray situation and, having researched the case and read Carroll’s book, I can see how it happened on both sides and why Trump would absolutely, flatly deny it and attack her instead.

To be honest, he could easily have said she defamed him because she was a willing participant in a shared fantasy role play. For the sake of his marriage and reputation he didn’t go that route.

I don’t think she deserved $90 million. Both the lawsuit and the verdict were highly weaponized and politicized.

Consider how many real victims of actual rape get no compensation. And how many brutal rapists walk away with no punishment.

Fake feminists like to tell women that they should be able to say and do anything they want without consequence. That is abjectly ridiculous.

While the court may have ruled against Trump, legal proceedings rarely capture the complex psychological gray areas of human interaction, instead reducing everything instead to a binary.