E. Jean Carroll, the writer who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her over 20 years ago — and later sued the president for “smearing” her reputation following the allegations — will profile other Trump accusers as part of a new series for The Atlantic.
“Nineteen, or 25, or 43 women have come forward to accuse Trump of ogling, grabbing, groping, mauling, or raping them,” Carroll writes in her introductory essay. “The women say they dodged, ran, froze, ducked, resisted, or laughed at him; and we all stood up, spoke out, got dragged through the mud, belittled, and besmirched.”
Carroll’s first interview in the “I Moved On Her Very Heavily” series — a quote from Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood leaked video — is with Natasha Stoynoff, a People magazine reporter who claims that Trump assaulted her at Mar-a-Lago in 2005 while she was on assignment to interview Donald and Melania on their one-year wedding anniversary.
Midway through that interview, Melania went to change her outfit for the photo shoot and Donald took Stoynoff on a tour of Mar-A-Lago, including a “beautiful, tremendous room” he wants to show her, she said.
“I remember it being a dark room,” Stoynoff said. “But there are windows, so not too dark. We go in. I’m looking around, wondering what he wants to show me. I hear the door close. I turn around. And… He’s right at me, pushing me against the wall.”
In October 2016, when Stoynoff went public with her story, six people corroborated that the writer had told them about the incident at the time, including her People colleagues and a journalism professor. Despite the accusations coming before Election Day, Trump still won the presidency.
“Sometimes it seems as though Americans have collectively accepted that there are dozens of credible accounts of sexual misconduct against the president of the United States,” The Atlantic executive editor Adrienne LaFrance said in a statement about the series. “These allegations have largely receded from public view. E. Jean Carroll’s work is a reminder that we cannot look away, and we shouldn’t.”
The “I Moved On Her Very Heavily” series will publish through Election Day, the Atlantic added.