Trump sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll, must pay her $5 million: Jury
Donald Trump was on Tuesday found liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E Jean Carroll in the 1990s, with the jury awarding her $5 million in a judgment.
That could haunt the former president as he campaigns to regain the White House. The jury also held Trump accused of defaming Carroll by branding her a liar.
Meanwhile, the former US President’s lawyer, Tacopina, told reporters Trump will re-appeal.
Carroll, 79, testified during the civil trial that Trump, 76, raped her at a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in either 1995 or 1996, then harmed her reputation by writing in an October 2022 post on his Truth Social platform that her claims were a “complete con job,” “a hoax” and “a lie.”
Following the judgment, Carroll, in a statement said, “Today, the world finally knows the truth. This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”
Trump, who was absent throughout the trial which began on April 25, in a post on his Truth Social platform, called the verdict a “disgrace” and said, “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is.”
Trump faces no criminal consequences and there was never a threat of prison as it was a civil case.
The jury, required to reach a unanimous verdict, deliberated for just under three hours. Its six men and three women awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages, but Trump will not have to pay so long as the case is on appeal.
In April, Trump gave election regulators only the rough estimates of his wealth that are required in financial disclosures, listing over a dozen properties as worth “over $50 million” each.
THE CASE AGAINST TRUMP
Carroll was one of more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment. She went public in a 2019 memoir with her allegation that the Republican raped her in the dressing room of a posh Manhattan department store.
Trump denied the allegations and said he never encountered Carroll at the store and did not know her. He has called her a “nut job” who invented “a fraudulent and false story” to sell a memoir.
Carroll sought unspecified damages, plus a retraction of what she said was Trump’s defamatory denials of her claims.
The trial revisited the lightning-rod topic of Trump’s conduct toward women.
Carroll gave multiple days of frank, occasionally emotional testimony, buttressed by two friends who testified that she reported the alleged attack to them soon afterward.
Meanwhile, the verdict comes as Trump faces an accelerating swirl of legal risks.
The former US President is fighting a New York criminal case related to hush money payments made to a porn actor. The state attorney general has sued him, his family and his business over alleged financial wrongdoing.
Trump is also contending with investigations into his possible mishandling of classified documents, his actions after the 2020 election and his activities during the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump denies wrongdoing in all of those matters.
JEAN CARROLL’s ALLEGATIONS
According to Carroll, she ended up in a dressing room with Trump after they ran into each other at Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified Thursday evening in the 1990s.
They took an impromptu jaunt to the lingerie department so he could search for a women’s gift and soon were teasing each other about trying on a skimpy bodysuit, Carroll testified. To her, it seemed like a comedy, something like her 1986 “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which a man admires himself in a mirror.
She further said Trump slammed the door and raped her as she tried to break away. Carroll said she ultimately pushed him off with her knee and immediately left the store.
Carroll said she never called the police or noted it in her diary. She said she kept silent for fear Trump would retaliate, out of shame and because she worried that people would see her as somewhat responsible for being attacked.