Left: Journalist E. Jean Carroll departs from the courthouse after the conclusion of the damages trial against Donald Trump at Manhattan Federal Court on Friday, January 26, 2024, in New York City (John Angelillo, Alamy Live News via AP). Right: Republican former President Donald Trump speaks at a primary election night party in Nashua, N.H., Jan. 23, 2024 (AP Photo/Matt Rourke).
Donald Trump is the once and future president of the United States, but he still owes one woman in New York nearly $90 million.
An attorney representing writer E. Jean Carroll sought to remind the country that the 45th and 47th president is still on the hook for that amount — and that his decisive electoral college win over Vice President Kamala Harris won’t dislodge the civil cases against him.
“Mr. Trump’s election to the presidency does nothing to change either the fact, as determined by two separate juries, that he sexually assaulted and defamed Ms. Carroll, or the applicable legal principles under which he was held liable for that conduct,” Robbie Kaplan said in comments originally reported by Courthouse News Service.
In May 2023, a civil jury of Manhattanites found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the dressing room of New York City department store Bergdorf Goodman sometime in the late 1990s — and later defamed her when he strongly denied the allegations and also denied ever knowing Carroll, to the press. While the civil sexual assault finding has zero force of criminal guilt, it was essentially cited as a necessary precursor to the defamation lawsuit. In that first case, the jury ordered Trump to pay his victim $5 million in damages.
In January, another Manhattan jury ruled in Carroll’s favor over a markedly similar set of legal complaints. Jurors would eventually award Carroll $83.3 million in that case.
Procedural issues made the order of events a bit topsy-turvy.
The first case filed was the last decided — and is referred to as Carroll I; this is the one that resulted in the $83.3 million verdict.
The second case was the first to be decided — and is referred to as Carroll II; resulting in the $5 million verdict. This case was actually the weightier of the two because it also included a sexual battery claim, which was allowed under the recently passed Adult Survivors Act.
Trump is currently appealing the verdicts before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; he is seeking a new trial in each case.
During oral arguments before a potentially unfriendly panel of judges in September, Kaplan made a point of directing the court’s attention to the fact that the Republican Party leader was in the courtroom.
As Law&Crime previously reported, this was an effort by Kaplan to juxtapose Trump’s lack of defense in the initial trial with his belatedly forceful defense against Carroll’s claims on appeal. In other words, Kaplan aimed to highlight how Trump “chose not” to call a single witness during the trial he now insists should be subject to a do-over.
More Law&Crime coverage: ‘I feel sad’: ‘Disappointed’ Trump trashes his own lawyers right in front of them but blames court failures on ‘rigged judges’ just after he seeks new E. Jean Carroll trial
The Trump team has argued the jury verdict was “unjust and erroneous” and based on “flawed and prejudicial evidentiary rulings” that permitted two “lifelong friends” to testify on their “vague recollections” of Carroll telling them about the Bergdorf Goodman incident, allowed in testimony of Trump accusers Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, and allowed in the infamous Access Hollywood recording and “grab ’em” remarks he apologized for but downplayed as “locker room talk” before the 2016 election.
In court, Trump’s attorney D. John Sauer argued that Carroll’s case is a “quintessential he-said she-said” situation where, decades after the alleged incident and after Trump was president, the plaintiff accused Trump of sexually assaulting her and found a way to inject “highly inflammatory, inadmissible evidence” and “prejudicial, and untested allegations of prior bad acts” into the trial to convince the jury of a “pattern” of misconduct and guarantee a liability finding.
At least one judge expressed reservations about Trump’s likelihood of success. Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin said it is typically “very hard to overturn a jury verdict based on evidentiary rulings.”
For now, the funds Trump is liable for are on hold pending the outcome of his appeal. In March, a judge approved a bond in the amount of $91.63 million owed to the defamed writer.
Matt Naham and Brandi Buchman contributed to this report.
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