E. Jean Carroll: Elle Magazine Fired Me Over Trump’s Smear Campaign
E. Jean Carroll, the Elle magazine advice columnist who publicly accused President Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room over two decades ago, said she was fired by the magazine after Trump defamed her.
“Because Trump ridiculed my reputation, laughed at my looks, & dragged me through the mud, after 26 years, ELLE fired me,” Carroll wrote on Twitter Tuesday evening. “I don’t blame Elle. It was the great honor of my life writing ‘Ask E. Jean.’”
In a Tuesday filing, Carroll’s lawyer wrote that the president’s “defamatory comments” about the advice columnist “damaged her reputation... and have diminished her readership’s goodwill towards her.”
“Since Trump defamed her, some readers even stopped sending her letters altogether, thus impairing Carroll’s column,” the filing reads, adding that Carroll received half as many letters in the months following Trump’s alleged campaign against her. “Elle magazine, which published ‘Ask E. Jean’ for 26 years, declined to renew her contract in December 2019, and so ended her primary income.”
The filing also includes a Dec. 11 email from the executive managing editor of Elle, Erin Hobday, informing Carroll the magazine would be terminating her contract and would be paying her for the five remaining columns left in their agreement.
“We and your readers so appreciate your many years of work for the magazine, and the wonderful columns you contributed to our publication,” Hobday wrote. “We will miss you tremendously.”
Hearst and a lawyer for Trump has not spoken publicly on the matter.
The filing also called for the court to deny Trump’s motion to stay Carroll’s defamation lawsuit, which she filed late last year.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said Trump’s motion was “another obvious delay tactic that is not grounded in the law” and an effort to “halt this case in its tracks and keep the truth from coming out.”
Carroll accused Trump of raping her in an article for The Cut last year, describing how he allegedly assaulting her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman.
Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!
Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
