On Monday, a federal appeals court handed a victory to Donald Trump, holding a jury liable for E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse of the president and later defamation of the former magazine columnist. The $5 million judgment was upheld.
The decision was handed down by a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
The May 2023 ruling concerns an incident in which Carroll said Trump raped her in a fitting room at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan around 1996, and a 2022 case in which Trump denied Carroll’s claims as fabricated. It all started with a truth social post in October.
Although jurors in federal court in Manhattan did not find that Trump committed rape, they awarded the former Elle magazine advice columnist $2.02 million for sexual assault and $2.98 million for defamation. was lowered.
Another jury in January ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her and damaging her reputation when she first denied the rape allegation in June 2019. Ta.
In both denials, Trump said he did not know Carroll, said she was “not my type” and said she fabricated the rape charge to promote her memoir. He is appealing the $83.3 million judgment.
Trump’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. Carroll’s attorney did not immediately respond to a similar request.
Carroll’s case continues even though Trump won a second four-year term in the White House on Nov. 5.
In 1997, in a case involving former President Bill Clinton, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a sitting president should be exempted from civil lawsuits in federal court over conduct prior to or unrelated to his official duties as president. A new judgment was made that there was no immunity.
Trump’s lawyers say U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan shouldn’t have let jurors hear testimony from two other women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct, so the $5 million verdict was thrown out. argued that it should be done.
One of them, businesswoman Jessica Leeds, said Trump molested her on a plane in the late 1970s. Another former People magazine writer, Natasha Stoynoff, said Trump forcibly kissed her at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in 2005.
Trump’s lawyers also said the jury shouldn’t have shown the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump graphically coerced women.
But the appeals court said Trump failed to prove that Kaplan made a mistake or that any errors merited a new trial.
Judge Kaplan also oversaw a trial that ended in an $83.3 million verdict.
