Global Courant 2023-05-10 16:07:58
A civil jury on Tuesday found former President Donald Trump liable for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll in a New York department store in the 1990s, and for defaming her latest fall when he denied her claim.
The jury of six men and three women also ordered Trump to pay Carroll a total of $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages after deliberating less than three hours in United States Courthouse in Manhattan.
Notably, jurors found Trump not liable for rape, the most serious charge Carroll made in a trial last year.
But their verdict that he sexually assaulted and forcibly touched her without her consent during a chance encounter at the Bergdorf Goodman store upheld her civil claim of battery. The trial in the case began on April 25.
“I have filed this lawsuit against Donald Trump to clear my name and get my life back,” Carroll, 79, said in a statement Tuesday.
“Today, the world finally knows the truth,” says Carroll, a former “Elle” magazine advice columnist and gonzo journalist biographer Hunter S.Thompson.
“This victory is not just for me, but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”
Her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in her own statement, “No one is above the law, not even a former president of the United States.”
“For far too long, survivors of sexual assault have faced a wall of doubt and intimidation,” Kaplan added. We hope and believe that today’s verdict will be an important step in breaking down that wall.”
Former US President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rides a golf cart at the Trump International Golf Links course in Doonbeg, Ireland, May 4, 2023.
Damian Storan | Reuters
Trump, who did not testify at the trial and never appeared in court, overturned the verdict in a post on Truth Social, his social media site.
“I have absolutely no idea who this woman is,” Trump wrote. “This verdict is a disgrace.”
His attorney Joseph Tacopina told CNBC, “Her claim was that she was raped and the jury rejected it. Confusing to say the least.”
“Of course we will appeal,” Tacopina said.
He noted that Judge Lewis Kaplan, the trial judge who is not related to Roberta Kaplan, last year had a landmark ruling by a federal appeals court overturned in another similar pending lawsuit by Carroll against Trump.
“We expect it to happen again,” the lawyer said.
The other lawsuit alleges Trump defamed Carroll when she made her rape allegation public in a 2019 New York magazine article.
At the time, Trump was president, and questions about whether he could be held liable for defamatory statements while holding that official position have effectively stalled that case for years.
E. Jean Carroll leaves Manhattan Federal Court following the verdict in the civil rape charge against former U.S. President Donald Trump, in New York City, May 9, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
The result of Tuesday’s trial is the latest — but possibly not the last — legal battle against Trump, who leads early polls for the 2024 GOP nomination.
In late March, he was indicted by a grand jury in the Manhattan Supreme Court on nearly three dozen counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. He pleaded not guilty in that case.
Trump also faces pending federal criminal investigations related to his attempts to reverse his loss in the 2020 presidential election and his failure to turn in government documents when he left the White House in early 2021.
And he may be indicted this summer by a grand jury in Georgia for attempting to get officials in that state to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory there in the 2020 election.
Georgia was one of several swing states that gave Biden his margin of victory in the Electoral College.
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Trump cannot be prosecuted for the alleged rape of Carroll because the statute of limitations for such a crime has long expired.
But Carroll sued him with a civil claim of battery under a New York state law that went into effect in late 2022 that opened a one-year window for lawsuits for alleged sexual assault that would otherwise have been time-barred by the statute of limitations.
Carroll also alleged that Trump slandered her last fall when he said she fabricated her rape account.
At the time, Trump called her allegations “a complete scam” and said she was not his “type”.
Despite that claim, in a deposition for Robert Kaplan’s case last fall, Trump mistook Carroll for his second wife Marla Maples in a photo that showed him and Carroll together in the 1980s.
E. Jean Carroll, former Elle magazine advice columnist, watches as a video statement by a former US President Donald Trump is played in court during a civil trial in which Carroll accuses the former US President in a civil trial of raping her in the dressing room of a department store in the mid-1990s, and defamation, in New York, USA, May 4, 2023 in this court sketch.
Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
Portions of a video of his statement were played to jurors during the trial and during closing arguments on Monday.
That statement included Trump being asked in 2005 about his comments during a taping for the entertainment TV show “Access Hollywood,” in which he boasted, “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet.”
“Just kiss. I’m not even waiting,” Trump said on that tape.
“And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said, including “grab them by the p—-.”
Trump told Carroll’s attorney during the deposition that those comments were “locker room talk.”
But he also said it’s “historically…true with stars” that they could grab women without their consent.
“If you look at the last million years, I think that’s been mostly true,” Trump testified at the time.
“Not always, but mostly true. Unfortunately or fortunately.”
When Carroll took the witness stand two weeks ago, she testified, “I’m here because of Trump raped me.”
From LR: Former President Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll, John Johnson, and Ivana Trump at an NBC party in the late 1980s.
Source: US District Court in Manhattan
Carroll recounted running into and talking to Trump late one afternoon at Bergdorf Goodman, where he recognized her as an advice columnist.
She testified that when they ended up in the lingerie section of the store, he led her to a dressing room, where he pushed her against a wall and sexually assaulted her.
Two of Carroll’s friends, Lisa Birnbach and Carol Marin, testified that she told them shortly after that Trump had raped her.
Two other women testified that Trump kissed and groped them without their consent in incidents that took place years apart.
A spokesman for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign said of Tuesday’s verdict, “The Democratic Party’s endless witch hunt for President Trump has reached a new low today.”
“In jurisdictions fully controlled by the Democratic Party, our country’s justice system is now being compromised by extremist leftist politics,” the spokesman said in a statement.
“Make no mistake, this whole bogus thing is a political effort aimed at President Trump because he is now an overwhelming front-runner to be re-elected President of the United States.”
But Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol that while the jury’s verdict doesn’t necessarily have any effect on Trump’s candidacy, “the fact is that I don’t think he could win the presidency. “
“He has a solid support base, but you can’t win a general election with just your base,” Cornyn said, according to NBC News. “So you have to appeal to a broader spectrum of people and he just never seems to try to do that. So to me that’s why I don’t think he can get elected.”
Read: The Trump Jury Form
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