Donald Trump speaks to press after attending a hearing in the E. Jean Carroll case.<\/span>Michael M. Santiago\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/span> legal team submitted false information to the Supreme Court in his ongoing legal battle against author E. Jean Carroll\u2014who he was found liable for sexually assaulting in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996\u2014according to documents reviewed by Mother Jones<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Justin D. Smith, Trump\u2019s lawyer in the case, misrepresented the plot of an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit<\/em> in a November 2025 petition to the court. Trump, along with some of his supporters, has for years claimed that Carroll\u2019s account of him raping and sexually assaulting her was copied from the 2012 SVU<\/em> episode.\u00a0<\/p>\n Friends of Carroll confirm she told them about Trump\u2019s assault years before the episode was filmed.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Trump is asking the Supreme Court to overturn a $5 million judgment<\/a> from 2023, when a federal jury held that he sexually abused Carroll and then defamed her. (A separate $83.3 million defamation judgement<\/a> against him from 2024 is not directly at issue, but could be in the future if the Court sides with Trump.) The justices are scheduled<\/a> to review Trump\u2019s petition on February 20.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the Supreme Court petition, Smith describes<\/a> the episode as featuring \u201ca business mogul\u201d who \u201cfantasizes about raping a victim in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.\u201d He writes that the \u201cplotline is virtually identical to the false allegations that Carroll launched against President Trump.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In the episode from season 13, entitled \u201cTheatre Tricks,\u201d there is a small plotline about a sexual encounter in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. But the man involved is a prominent New York City judge, not, as Smith claimed, a \u201cbusiness mogul.\u201d And what happened in the dressing room, which is discussed but not shown in the episode, was pre-planned and by all accounts consented to. A person with knowledge of how the SVU<\/em> episode came together told<\/a> CNN in 2019 that there\u2019s \u201cno correlation\u2014none whatsoever\u201d between \u201cTheatre Tricks\u201d and Carroll\u2019s allegations against Trump. Carroll has repeatedly denied<\/a> she made up her allegation based<\/a> on the episode.\u00a0At least two friends of Carroll have confirmed<\/a> the author told them about the assault shortly after it took place and years before the episode was filmed or broadcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n Smith did not respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones<\/em> on the false information included in the petition. Roberta Kaplan, Carroll\u2019s lawyer in the case, also did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n The Rules of the Supreme Court say<\/a> that petitioners must present information with \u201caccuracy, brevity, and clarity.\u201d Failure to do so, per Rule 14.4, \u201cis sufficient reason for the Court to deny a petition.\u201d It is unclear if Trump\u2019s lawyer knowingly included inaccurate information or failed to confirm the details of the episode in question.\u00a0<\/p>\n The plot of \u201cTheatre Tricks\u201d <\/span>involves a struggling young actress who seeks out sex work on a sugar daddy website, where she meets a judge who she helps fulfill a \u201cstranger rape fantasy\u201d that involves invading a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room while a woman tries on lingerie. It is one of over 550 SVU<\/em> episodes spread across more than two dozen seasons containing hundreds of different examples of sexual violence\u2014from harassment all the way to murder. The dressing room meet-up with the judge is mentioned for less than one minute in \u201cTheatre Tricks,\u201d which centers on a separate, nonconsensual sexual assault experienced by another character.<\/p>\n Carroll\u2019s first public account of what happened with Trump in that dressing room around three decades ago came in a 2019 New York <\/em>magazine article<\/a>, excerpting her upcoming book. She detailed running into Trump when he asked her to advise him on a gift for, as she quoted him, \u201ca girl.\u201d They went around the store before he led them to the lingerie section, she wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n What unfolded next, as Carroll has since described many times, was Trump leading her into the dressing room, lunging at her, pushing her against the wall, pulling down her tights, using his fingers on her sexually, and penetrating her with his penis. Carroll wrote that she was eventually able to push him off and run out.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carroll later sued<\/a> Trump in 2022 for sexual battery and for defaming her by denying it through New York\u2019s Adult Survivors Act. While Carroll has maintained that Trump used his fingers and penis in the assault, the jury, which ultimately awarded her $5 million, stopped short of finding Trump liable for rape under penile penetration. They found that Trump had \u201cforcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll\u2019s vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm,\u201d according to District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n The legal definition for rape differs by state and, at the time, New York\u2019s law required penile penetration. (In January 2024, New York broadened<\/a> its rape law to include other kinds of nonconsensual anal, oral, and vaginal sexual contact.)\u00a0Despite that, Judge Kaplan wrote<\/a> in 2023 that the jury\u2019s decision \u201cdoes not mean\u201d that Carroll \u201cfailed to prove that Mr. Trump \u2018raped\u2019 her as many people commonly understand the word \u2018rape.\u2019\u201d \u201cIndeed,\u201d he continued, \u201cthe jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has consistently denied the claims, saying<\/a> over the years that Carroll is a \u201cnut job,\u201d \u201cmentally sick,\u201d and \u201cnot my type.\u201d He has posted<\/a> on social media more than 100 times about her accusations.\u00a0<\/p>\n Smith\u2019s faulty description<\/span> of the SVU<\/em> episode was detailed by David Boyle, a California lawyer with a habit of filing amicus briefs on major Supreme Court cases. In his early January submission<\/a> in support of Carroll, Boyle writes of \u201cTrump\u2019s disrespect for rape victims,\u201d and calls out how the president\u2019s filling \u201cmakes up a television-show character, or at least the character\u2019s profession, to discredit Carroll.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Why did Boyle write the brief? \u201cIt\u2019s a famous case, and I don\u2019t like rapists,\u201d he says, \u201ceven if it\u2019s quote-unquote \u2018just\u2019 a digital rapist,\u201d dryly noting Judge Kaplan\u2019s holding about penetration. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is the Supreme Court. People are supposed to be on good behavior, their best behavior, and do things in good faith,\u201d Boyle says. \u201cHe\u2019s the president. We\u2019re paying him a salary to be president. He\u2019s supposed to be\u2014laugh as you will, knowing who he is\u2014a role model.\u201d<\/p>\n Boyle\u2019s amicus brief was one of five submitted to the court. The other four are in support of Donald Trump and his argument that certain evidence used in the previous trial was inadmissible. Those briefs do not mention the SVU<\/em> episode, nor does Trump\u2019s legal team\u2019s latest filing from January 28.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump, members of his legal teams, and some of his supporters have called on the SVU<\/em> episode for years while attempting to discredit Carroll.\u00a0<\/p>\n Within days of Carroll\u2019s account originally being published<\/a> in New York<\/em>, a short clip from \u201cTheatre Tricks\u201d started circulating<\/a> online. \u201cLooks like that lunatic E. Jean Caroll got the idea about getting \u2018raped\u2019 by Trump in a dressing room at Burgdorfs while trying on lingerie from an episode of Law and Order SVU,\u201d Mark Dice, a right-wing commentator with nearly 2 million YouTube subscribers, asserted<\/a>. David J. Harris Jr, now host of The Pulse<\/em> on Newsmax<\/em>, wrote<\/a> a post entitled, \u201cProof That Trump Accuser is a Fraud\u2026Story Came From Law and Order SVU.\u201d Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones also amplified<\/a> the claim on his website InfoWars<\/em>. Even Donald Trump Jr., the president\u2019s son, retweeted the clip, according to a CNN report<\/a> from 2019.<\/p>\n During Carroll\u2019s 2023 civil trial against Trump, his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, brought up<\/a> the episode. While testifying in that trial, Carroll\u2019s lawyer Michael Ferrara asked her if she was \u201cmaking up your allegation based on a popular TV show?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Carroll responded. \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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