Appeal verdict: Trump must pay US$5 million to E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury’s decision in a civil case that found Donald Trump sexually abused a female columnist in the fitting room of an upscale department store in the mid-1990s.

The 2nd United States Court of Appeals issued a written opinion upholding a Manhattan jury’s US$5 million award to E. Jean Carroll for defamation and sexual abuse.

The longtime magazine columnist testified at a 2023 trial that Donald Trump turned a friendly encounter in the spring of 1996 into a violent attack after they happily entered the store’s fitting room.

Donald Trump did not attend the trial after repeatedly denying that the attack took place. But he briefly testified at a follow-up defamation trial earlier this year, which resulted in a US$83.3 million settlement. The second lawsuit arose from comments made by then-President Donald Trump in 2019, after Ms. Carroll first made the accusations publicly in a memoir.

In their ruling, three appeals court judges rejected allegations by Donald Trump’s lawyers that trial Judge Lewis A. Kaplan made several decisions that marred the trial, including allowing two other women, who had accused Donald Trump of having sexually assaulted them, to testify.

The judge also allowed the jury to view the infamous video Access Hollywood in which Donald Trump bragged in 2005 about grabbing women’s genitals because, when someone is a celebrity, we can do everything.

No error of law

We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged decisions, the Second Circuit said. Furthermore, he failed to demonstrate that any alleged error or combination of errors affected his substantial rights as required for a new trial.

In September, E. Jean Carroll, 81, and Donald Trump, 78, both attended oral arguments in the Second Circuit.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Donald Trump, said in a statement that the Republican was elected by voters who gave overwhelming mandate, and they demand an immediate end to the political instrumentalization of our justice system and a swift rejection of all witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded E. Jean Carroll hoax, which will continue to be the subject of of a call.

Roberta Kaplan, an attorney who represented E. Jean Carroll during the trial and who is not related to the judge, said in a statement: E. Jean Carroll and I are both pleased with today’s decision. We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments.

The first jury concluded in May 2023 that Donald Trump had sexually abused Carroll and defamed her with comments he made in October 2022. That jury awarded Carroll US$5 million.

In January, a second jury awarded Carroll an additional US$83.3 million in damages for comments Donald Trump made about him while president, finding them defamatory. The judge had asked that jury to accept the first jury’s finding that Donald Trump had sexually abused E. Jean Carroll. The appeal of this verdict has not yet been heard.

E. Jean Carroll testified at both trials that her life as a magazine columnist Elle had been marred by Donald Trump’s public comments, which she said motivated some people to send her death threats and left her afraid to leave the upstate New York cabin where she lives.

Donald Trump testified for less than three minutes during the second trial and was not allowed to challenge the jury’s findings in May 2023. Yet he appeared agitated in the courtroom throughout the two-week trial, and the jurors could hear him grumbling about the affair.

And blatant bias against Trump

During appeal arguments in September, Donald Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, said the testimony of witnesses who recalled E. Jean Carroll telling them about the 1996 meeting with Donald Trump immediately afterwards was inappropriate, because the witnesses had blatant bias against Donald Trump.

And the lawyer said the judge should also have excluded the testimony of the two women who said Donald Trump committed similar acts of sexual abuse against them in the 1970s and in 2005. Donald Trump has also denied these allegations.

The Second Circuit wrote: In each of the three encounters, Mr. Trump engaged in casual conversation with a woman he barely knew, then abruptly lunged at her in a semi-public place and began kissing and touching her forcefully without his consent. The acts are similar enough to show a pattern.

He stated that the band Access Hollywood directly corroborated the women’s testimony about the pattern of behavior they experienced.