A jury ruled that the frontrunner to land the GOP presidential nomination needs to pay up for repeatedly defaming the author over sexual harassment claims
JANUARY 26, 2024
A NEW YORK jury ruled on Friday that Donald Trump must pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in total damages for repeatedly defaming her after she accused him of sexual assault.
Trump, the frontrunner to win the Republican nomination for president, must pay the author $7.3 million in compensatory damages, $11 million in reputation repair damages, and $65 million in putative damages. Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million in a separate defamation ruling last May.
Carroll has now twice successfully sued Trump in civil court. All of the former president’s rantings and ravings about Carroll online and at his rallies did little more than strengthen the plaintiff’s argument that the former president had continued to defame Caroll [with malice] after having previously been found liable for defamation, as well as for sexually assaulting Carroll in the ‘90s.
The jury deliberated for a little less than three hours after a tense day during Friday’s closing arguments. “My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury,” Judge Lewis Kaplan told jurors after the verdict was handed down, ostensibly warning them of potential retaliation from the former president and his supporters.
Carroll in 2019 accused Trump of assault, alleging that the former president raped her in the dressing room of New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in the ‘90s. Originally, Carroll filed a defamation suit over statements Trump made about her in the aftermath of her accusation. In 2022, she filed a separate lawsuit alleging additional defamatory statements by Trump, and a charge of battery under New York’s Adult Survivors Act. In the trial that took place last year, litigating her 2022 lawsuit, Trump declined to attend or even present a defense and was found liable on both counts.
The jury’s decision, in that case, was the basis for Judge Kaplan’s decision that the current trial — covering Carroll’s original 2019 suit — would operate under a default judgment establishing Trump’s liability, and focus only on determining the damages owed to Carroll.
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Excellent! I don’t think Trump has that amount of cash ready, and who’s gonna give him credit anymore? Looking forward towards foreclosure on Mar-A-Lago!
😀
It will be appealed and the appellate level is a completely different ball game. The entire suit is simply evidence of the corruption of New York courts. Trump was going to lose on the trial level regardless of what he did to defend himself, or the facts of the case.
I still hope that the orange asshole gets put behind bars.
It may well be appealed – that is, if trumpkov can put up the 83 million, or secure a bond to cover it while his appeals play out. But there’s no reason to believe that he would succeed on appeal – his tweets defaming E. Jean Carroll speak for themselves. The amount of damages isn’t so outrageously large that an appeals court would deem it unreasonable. And trumpkov was just bragging in court in another trial that he’s worth billions.
I just came across the following. I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t say how accurate it is.
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Let me ruin the suspense for everyone. Trump doesn’t have an appeal.
I know the talking heads on TV (who have never tried a case or appealed a jury verdict) have to mention it. Here’s why it isn’t going to fly.
To have a meritorious appeal, you have to preserve a reversible error at the trial level. This is why you hire competent counsel. You need someone who actually knows the rules of evidence and procedure.
Alina Habba had no clue what was occurring throughout the trial. She not only failed to preserve any remote grounds for appeal, like a moron, she repeatedly and unintentionally waived them over and over.
For example, she kept saying “no objection” as exhibits were entered into evidence.
It appeared to me that she was saying that because she that’s something she had heard real lawyers say before.
Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, what she was doing over and over was waiving his ability to appeal over those evidentiary issues. Because she is a moron who would rather “play” lawyer than do the research to *be* a lawyer.
There’s no appeal here. And because people have asked me in the past, no, there is no such thing as an incompetent counsel defense in civil cases. That’s for criminal matters.
Take this verdict to the bank.