Global Courant 2023-05-10 01:48:23
A jury has found former President Donald Trump liable for battery use and libel in the E. Jean Carroll case.
Carroll, who filed the lawsuit in November, claimed Trump defamed her in his 2022 Truth Social post calling her accusations “a hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!” when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman locker room in the 1990s.
The former Elle magazine columnist added a battery charge under a recently passed law in New York that would allow adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations. Trump has denied all allegations that he raped or defamed Carroll.
The jury awarded Carroll a total of $5 million in the lawsuit. Jurors found that Trump did not rape Carroll but sexually assaulted her, and awarded damages of $2 million in compensatory damages and $20,000 in punitive damages for battery.
The jury awarded $1 million in punitive damages, $1.7 million for reputational restoration and $280,000 punitive damages for libel.
The jury reached its verdict after barely three hours of deliberation.
Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by about two dozen women and has denied all such claims. Carroll’s battery charge was the first to come before a jury.
E. Jean Carroll leaves Manhattan Federal Court following the May 9, 2023, civil rape charge against former President Donald Trump in New York.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Trump called the verdict “an embarrassment,” and a spokesman for the former president said they would appeal.
“I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS,” he posted on his Truth Social platform. “THIS VERDICT IS A SHAME – A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!”
“Make no mistake, this whole bogus thing is a political pursuit directed at President Trump because he is now an overwhelming front-runner to be re-elected President of the United States,” a Trump spokesman said in a statement. “This case will be appealed and in the end we will win.”
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, told reporters as she left the courthouse, “We are very happy.”
Carroll sat between two of her attorneys, Kaplan and Shawn Crowley, as the verdict was read. At one point, Crowley put her arm around Carroll, who was holding Kaplan’s hand.
Defense attorney Joe Tacopina consulted with co-counsel Chad Siegel and Perry Brandt.
Before deliberations began, Trump posted on social media: “Waiting for a jury decision on a false accusation where, despite being a current political candidate and leading everyone else in both parties, I am not allowed to speak or defend myself even if I have a hard nose.” reporters are shouting questions about this case at me. Meanwhile, the other party has a book falsely accusing me of rape and is cooperating with the press. I will therefore speak only after the trial, but will appeal against the unconstitutional silence of me, as a candidate, regardless of the outcome.”
Early in the trial, the judge had reprimanded the defense over Trump’s social media posts about Carroll and her accusations. The judge did not comment on this most recent report, but rather indicated that if Trump wanted to speak on the case, he would have to testify under oath, which Trump refused to do.
In a civil case, jurors may reach a negative conclusion when a defendant decides not to testify.
“He just decided not to be here. He never looked you in the eye and denied raping Ms. Carroll. He never did,” Carroll’s lawyer, Michael Ferrara, told jurors at the trial.
Carroll testified at the trial that she ran into Trump at Bergdorf Goodman’s entrance and that he asked her to help him buy some lingerie as a gift. The two laughed and joked, she said, as he led her into a dressing room, closed the door behind him, pushed her against a wall and sexually assaulted her.
She told the jury she first met Trump in 1987, but she had trouble pinpointing the date she claimed he assaulted her, which she said was sometime around 1996.
“And why isn’t there a date for an event as important as this in someone’s life?” attorney Joe Tacopina countered. ‘It’s no coincidence. You can’t provide an alibi without a date, month or year.’
Carroll’s lawyers seized Trump’s statement last year when he was shown a 1980s photo of Carroll, her then-husband John Johnson, Trump and his then-wife Ivana Trump — briefly mistaking Carroll for his second wife, Marla Maples.
“That’s Marla, yes. That’s my wife,” Trump said, according to the statement about Carroll.
“The truth is that E. Jean Carroll, a former cheerleader and Mrs. Indiana, was just Donald Trump’s type,” Carroll’s lawyers argued in court.
Carroll’s lawyers juxtaposed Trump’s misidentification with his remarks on the infamous 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he is heard saying of women, “I just start kissing them…I don’t even wait” and that when you a star you can “grab by the p—-.”
“What is Donald Trump doing here?” That’s what Carroll’s lawyer said. “He tells you in his own words how he treats women. It’s his modus operandi.’
The jury also heard from two other women who alleged they had been sexually assaulted by Trump, which Carroll’s attorneys said showed a pattern of behavior on Trump’s part. Former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff testified that she was at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in late 2005 when Trump asked her for a room on the estate, closed the door behind her, pushed her against the wall, and began kissing her. . She told the jury she tried to push him away and that the alleged encounter ended when a butler entered the room.
Jessica Leeds testified that she was sitting next to Trump in the first class section of a flight to New York in 1979, “when suddenly Trump decided to kiss and grope me.” She said she freed herself when Trump began to put his hand up her skirt and “burst back” to the coaching area.
Trump, who chose not to testify in his own defense, has previously denied the allegations made by both women and Carroll.
The defense called no witnesses, but Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina told the jury that Carroll’s claim was “an incredibly fictitious work” and that if the alleged assailant was anyone other than Donald Trump, “we’re not here. Not on this story.”
“What they want is for you to hate him enough to ignore the facts,” the lawyer said.
Joe Tacopina, Donald Trump’s attorney, arrives in Manhattan federal court in New York on May 9, 2023.
Seth Wenig/AP
“There is no objective evidence to support her claim, including a police report,” Tacopina told the jury. “She never went to the police because it didn’t happen.”
Tacopina said Carroll “falsely claimed he raped her,” which is why Trump publicly attacked her.
Tacopina said there was no reason for Trump to appear because Carroll’s story was “completely fabricated” and lacked credibility because she couldn’t pinpoint when the alleged rape happened.
“And if Donald Trump testified, what could I have asked him?” Tacopina said. “Where were you on an unknown date 27 or 28 years ago?”
Carroll’s lawsuit was her second lawsuit against Trump related to her rape allegation.
She previously sued Trump in 2019 after the then president rejected her rape claim Tell the hill that Carroll “totally lied” saying, “I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, okay?” That defamation case is embroiled in a procedural shuffle over whether Trump, as president, was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government when he made those remarks.
If Trump is determined to have acted as a government employee, the US government would take the place of the defendant in that lawsuit — meaning that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for libel.
This month’s trial came as Trump sought the White House for a third time as he faced numerous legal challenges related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol, his handling of classified material after leaving the White House and possible attempts to interfere in the 2020 Georgia vote. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said last week she would decide whether to file criminal charges against Trump or his allies this summer.
ABC News’ Olivia Rubin contributed to this report.
