Donald Trump sexually assaulted the writer E Jean Carroll, US legal jury in the civil trial | World news
Donald Trump traumatized magazine writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and later defamed her by falsely naming her, a judge ruled Tuesday, upsetting the former US president’s legal backlash as he did so. campaign to retake office in 2024.
A nine-member panel of Manhattan federal court awarded about $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
The jury deliberated for just under three hours. He rejected Trump’s denial that he attacked Carroll and ruled in his favor. To find him liable, a jury of six men and three women was required to reach a joint verdict.
Carroll, 79, testified during a civil trial that Trump, 76, sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in either 1995 or 1996, then defamed her by writing in an October 2022 post on the social media platform He called his claims a “complete con job,” a “hoax” and a “lie.”
President from 2017 to 2021, Trump is the front-runner in opinion polls for the Republican presidential nomination and has shown an unflinching ability to weather debates that can sink other politicians.
It seems unlikely in America’s political climate that the civil trial will affect Trump’s core supporters, who see his legal troubles as part of a concerted effort by opponents to undermine him.
“People who are anti-Trump are going to stay that way, the core pro-Trump voters are not going to change, and the ambivalent ones I don’t think this kind of thing is going to live,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist in Pennsylvania.
Any negative impact could be small and limited to rural women and moderate Republicans, he said.
Jurors are tasked with deciding whether Trump molested, sexually abused or touched Carroll, any of which would satisfy his battery claim. They separately asked whether Trump blamed Carroll.
Because this is a civil case, Trump faces no criminal consequences. Carroll is seeking unspecified monetary damages.
Trump’s legal team has opted not to take a defense, the joy of the jurors will see that Carroll has failed to make a persuasive case.
Trump has said that Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist and registered Democrat, made the allegations to try to increase sales of his 2019 memoir and to damage politics.
Because the case was in civil court, Carroll needed to prove his rape by a “preponderance of the evidence” — meaning more often than not — instead of the higher standard used in criminal cases of ” evidence beyond reasonable doubt.” Carroll had to present “clear and convincing evidence” to prove his disciplinary claim.
The investigation revealed testimony from two women who said Trump sexually assaulted them over a decade ago.
Former People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff told jurors that Trump cornered her at his Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida in 2005 and kissed her forcefully for “a few minutes” until an attendant stop the alleged attack. Another woman, Jessica Leeds, testified that Trump kissed her, touched her and put his hand up her skirt on a plane in 1979.
Jurors also heard excerpts from the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump said women let him “take them by the monkey.”
“Historically, that’s true, with the stars … if you look at the last million years,” Trump said in an October 2022 video deposition played in court. He has repeatedly denied allegations of sexual harassment.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, told jurors during closing arguments Monday that the 2005 video was evidence that Trump had assaulted Carroll and other women.
The federal trial, presided over by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is not related to Carroll’s attorney, began on April 25. In connection with the exclusion of a civil lawsuit against the former president, the judge ruled that the names, addresses and places of work of the judges shall be reserved.
Carroll testified that he assaulted Trump at Bergdorf’s while he was shopping for a gift for another woman. Carroll said she agreed to help Trump pick out a gift and the two looked at underwear before he was put in a dressing room, slammed into a wall and assaulted. Carroll testified that he could not remember the exact day or year of the alleged rape.
Carroll faced questions from Trump’s legal team that attacked the validity of her account including why she never reported the matter to the police or cried out during the alleged incident.
Two of Carroll’s friends said she told them about the alleged rape at the time but swore them to secrecy because she feared Trump would use his fame and wealth to retaliate against her if she came forward.
Carroll told judges that she decided to break her silence in 2017 after rape allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein prompted many women to come forward with accounts of sexual violence by powerful men. He went public with his account while Trump was still president.
He said that Trump’s public statements damaged his career and launched a campaign of cyberbullying by his supporters with many threatening messages and social media posts.
While Trump did not testify at the trial, a video clip from the October 2022 deposition shows him mistaking Carroll for one of his ex-wives in a black-and-white photo among several people at an event.
“It’s Marla,” Trump said in the deposition, referring to his second wife Marla Maples. Trump has previously said he couldn’t impeach Carroll because he’s not “his type.”
Trump has pointed to Carroll’s investigation into campaign fundraising emails as evidence of what he portrays as a Democratic plot to undermine him politically.
His poll numbers have improved after he was charged in New York in March with leaking business records over a delayed payment to a porn star before his victory in the 2016 presidential election.
That indictment, filed in New York state court, makes him the first past or present U.S. president to be criminally indicted. Trump has pleaded not guilty and said the charges were politically motivated.
