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Wednesday, January 01, 2025
Trump loses appeal in $5 million E. Jean Carroll defamation, sexual abuse case. (WaPo)
Looks like a correct appellate ruling upholding jury verdict. Unlike the late President Jimmy Carter, DJT did more than lust in his heart. From The Washington Post:
Trump loses appeal in $5 million E. Jean Carroll defamation, sexual abuse case
The ruling by federal judges said Donald Trump did not demonstrate that the district court “erred in any of the challenged rulings.”
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E. Jean Carroll arrives at a courthouse in New York on April 25, 2023. (Seth Wenig/AP)
A federal appeals court Monday upheld a $5 million New York civil trial jury verdict that found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan said that Trump did not demonstrate that the district court “erred in any of the challenged rulings.”
In May 2023, jurors determined that Carroll had sufficiently proved she was sexually abused in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s after a chance encounter with Trump. The jury also found that Trump defamed Carroll years later on social media, after she publicly accused him of rape.
The jury awarded Carroll a total of $5 million.
Trump appealed that decision, arguing that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan admitted evidence in trial that he should not have, including an “Access Hollywood” recording, first reported on by The Washington Post in 2016, in which Trump talks in graphic terms about grabbing women by their genitals. Trump’s team also argued that the judge wrongly allowed the jury hear testimony from two women who alleged that Trump had sexually assaulted them.
The federal panel ruled Monday that the judge’s decision to allow the jury to hear that evidence was proper and that “the district court did not abuse its discretion in making any of the challenged evidentiary rulings.”
“The jury made its assessment of the facts and claims on a properly developed record,” the judges wrote in the ruling.
In response to the appeals court’s ruling, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement that the decision would be appealed and that the case should be dismissed. Voters who elected Trump in November to a second term “demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system,” Cheung said.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said in a statement, “Both E. Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today’s decision.”
D. John Sauer argued on behalf of Trump before the appeals court in September. Trump has nominated Sauer to serve as solicitor general — the government’s top advocate before the Supreme Court and the fourth-highest-ranking Justice Department job — in his incoming presidential administration.
Trump’s legal team could ask the 2nd Circuit to rehear the appeal, with every judge on the court hearing his appeal the second time. His defense attorneys could also try to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump’s public disdain for Carroll started soon after she first publicly alleged — in a 2019 magazine excerpt from her memoir — that he had sexually assaulted her decades earlier. Trump, who was president at the time, called her a liar, claimed she was a complete stranger to him and suggested he could not have assaulted her because he found her unattractive.
The first guilty verdict found that Trump was liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her in a social media post in 2022. The second, $83 million judgment found that Trump acted with malice as he defamed for years.
Perry Stein covers the Justice Department and FBI for The Washington Post. She previously covered D.C. education. Before she joined The Post in 2015, she was a staff writer for Washington City Paper and wrote for the Miami Herald. follow on X@perrystein
Shayna Jacobs is a federal courts and law enforcement reporter on the national security team at The Washington Post, where she covers the Southern and Eastern districts of New York. follow on X@shaynajacobs
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