A Recent York federal jury found former President Donald Trump liable on Tuesday for sexually abusing and forcibly touching the author E. Jean Carroll at a department store within the Nineties, and for defaming her last fall when he denied her claim.
The jury of six men and three women ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
The decision within the civil trial got here after lower than three hours of deliberations in U.S. District Court in lower Manhattan.
The jury notably didn’t find Trump responsible for rape, as Carroll had alleged.
“I even have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media site Truth Social.
A spokesman for his 2024 Republican presidential campaign said, “This case will likely be appealed, and we are going to ultimately win.”
Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump rides a golf cart at Trump International Golf Links course, in Doonbeg, Ireland May 4, 2023.
Damien Storan | Reuters
Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said, “We’re very joyful,” as she left the courthouse along with her client. Carroll didn’t speak to reporters.
The decision is the newest legal blow against Trump, who leads early polls for the 2024 GOP nomination. In late March he was indicted by a Manhattan state Supreme Court grand jury on nearly three dozen counts of falsifying business records in reference to a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump also faces pending federal criminal investigations related to his efforts to overturn his loss within the 2020 presidential election, and to his failure to give up government documents when he left the White House in early 2021. He also faces possible indictment by a Georgia grand jury for his try to get officials there to reverse President Joe Biden’s victory within the 2020 election in that state,
E. Jean Carroll exits the Manhattan Federal Court following the decision within the civil rape accusation case against former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Recent York City, May 9, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Carroll, 79, claimed in her lawsuit that Trump raped her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman store within the mid-Nineties.
Trump can’t be prosecuted for the alleged rape since the statute of limitations for such a criminal offense has long since passed.
But Carroll sued him with a civil claim of battery under a Recent York state law enacted in late 2022 that opened a one-year window for lawsuits alleging sexual assaults which otherwise could be barred by the statute of limitations.
Carroll also claimed that Trump defamed her last fall when he said she had made up her account of being raped.
Trump, 76, called the allegations “an entire con job,” and said that she was not his “type.”
Despite that claim, Trump mistook Carroll for his second wife Marla Maples in a photograph showing him and Carroll together within the Eighties.
Former Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll watches as a former U.S. president Donald Trump’s video deposition is played in court during a civil trial where Carroll accuses the previous U.S. president in a civil lawsuit of raping her in a department store dressing room within the mid-Nineties, and of defamation, in Recent York, U.S., May 4, 2023 on this courtroom sketch.
Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
Trump didn’t testify through the trial.
But portions of a video of his deposition taken last fall by Carroll’s lawyer were played for jurors through the trial, and through closing arguments on Monday.
That deposition included Trump being asked about his comments in 2005 during a taping for the entertainment television show “Access Hollywood,” wherein he boasted: “I’m routinely interested in beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet.”
“Just kiss. I do not even wait,” Trump said on that tape. “And if you’re a star, they allow you to do it. You may do anything,” he said, including “grab ’em by the p—-.”
Trump told Carroll’s lawyer through the deposition that those comments were “locker room talk.”
But he also said it has been “historically … true with stars” that they may grab women without their permission.
“In the event you look during the last million years, I assume that is been largely true,” Trump testified in his deposition. “Not all the time, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.”
Carroll took the witness stand.
“I’m here because Trump raped me,” she testified.
In her testimony, Carroll said she encountered Trump by likelihood in Bergdorf Goodman, where he recognized her as an advice columnist. She testified that once they ended up in the shop’s lingerie department he ushered right into a dressing room, where he shoved her against a wall and sexually assaulted her.
Two friends of Carroll’s, Lisa Birnbach and Carol Marin, testified she had told them soon after the alleged incident that Trump had raped her.
Two other women testified that Trump had kissed and groped them without their consent in incidents that occurred years apart.
A spokesman for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign said of the jury’s verdict, “The Democratic Party’s never-ending witch-hunt of President Trump hit a latest low today.”
“In jurisdictions wholly controlled by the Democratic Party our nation’s justice system is now compromised by extremist left-wing politics,” the spokesman said in a press release. “Make no mistake, this complete bogus case is a political endeavor targeting President Trump because he’s now an amazing front-runner to be once more elected President of america.”
Read: Trump jury verdict form
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