How many sexual assault or misconduct lawsuits have been filed against Donald Trump and when were they filed?
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Executive summary
Publicly documented civil suits that explicitly name Donald J. Trump over alleged sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the provided reporting include an anonymous “Katie Johnson/Jane Doe” complaint filed in 2016, a 1997 civil suit brought by model/model-turned-business partner Jill Harth reported in The Guardian as dating to the late 1990s, and two high‑profile lawsuits by writer E. Jean Carroll — the first filed in 2019 and a second amended/renewed filing in November 2022 — with trials and large jury awards following in 2023–2024 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]. The record assembled in these sources demonstrates that some allegations were pursued in court while many other accusations reported in media accounts are allegations rather than necessarily the subject of filed civil complaints in the record provided [1] [2].
1. The 2016 “Katie Johnson / Jane Doe” complaints: an underage-rape suit filed and dismissed
An anonymous plaintiff using the pseudonym “Katie Johnson” filed a complaint in California in April 2016 accusing Trump and Jeffrey Epstein of raping her when she was 13 in 1994; that California case was dismissed the following month and a second version was filed in New York in June by the same woman as “Jane Doe” alleging similar incidents in 1994 when she was 13 [1]. The Wikipedia summary in the reporting shows the filings and the dismissal but the sources in this set do not provide later court docket details or final disposition beyond the initial dismissal and refiling noted in those excerpts [1].
2. The 1997 civil lawsuit reported by The Guardian (Jill Harth claim)
The Guardian’s timeline recounts an earlier civil suit from 1997 in which a former business partner, reported as alleging forcible kissing, groping and what she described as “attempted rape,” was referenced as a 1997 lawsuit framing past allegations against Trump [2]. The Guardian piece situates that 1997 filing in a timeline of complaints and allegations dating back decades, but the provided snippet does not include the full complaint text or court outcome, so this reporting supports the existence of a 1997 civil action allegation without giving full disposition details in these excerpts [2].
3. E. Jean Carroll’s two lawsuits: 2019 and November 2022, trials and awards
E. Jean Carroll first sued Trump in 2019, bringing defamation claims after publicly alleging he sexually assaulted her in the mid‑1990s; that 2019 lawsuit (Carroll I) is documented as commencing in 2019 in multiple legal summaries [3] [6]. Carroll later filed a second suit (Carroll II), including battery under New York’s Adult Survivors Act and additional defamation claims tied to renewed denials by Trump, with that battery claim added in November 2022 when the law temporarily opened a new filing window [4] [3]. Those cases produced jury findings in 2023 that Trump was liable for sexual abuse and defamation and later additional damages awards in 2024, with reporting citing an initial $5 million award and later multimillion‑dollar awards that together amounted to large judgments [5] [6] [4].
4. Counting lawsuits versus counting allegations: what the sources permit
The reporting collected here documents specific civil suits in 1997 (Guardian reference), April/June 2016 (Katie Johnson/Jane Doe), and the two Carroll suits filed in 2019 and November 2022 [2] [1] [3] [4]. Several sources also catalogue many allegations made publicly over decades—Wikipedia, The Guardian and other timelines reference “at least 25” women who have accused Trump of various forms of sexual misconduct—but those aggregated allegation counts are not identical to a count of distinct civil lawsuits and the excerpts do not list every filed complaint or its filing date [1] [2]. The available reporting therefore supports naming at least four distinct civil complaint episodes referencing sexual misconduct , while also making clear that numerous other allegations exist in the public record though not all are shown here as having produced named lawsuits in these excerpts [1] [2].
5. Caveats, competing narratives and implicit agendas in the sources
News outlets and legal summaries emphasize different things: court records and FindLaw/Justia material focus on procedural posture and rulings (Carroll filings and appeals) while media timelines and encyclopedic pages compile allegations and lawsuits side‑by‑side, which can blur the line between an allegation and a filed legal claim [3] [7] [1] [2]. Some reporting highlights verdicts and damages to underline accountability [5] [6], while other pieces emphasize the breadth of allegations across decades—an implicit agenda found in timeline journalism to portray pattern and context—so any precise numerical tally depends on whether the inquiry counts only filed civil suits that name Trump in court filings or all public accusations reported by media [1] [2].