Jury sides with Trump accuser
Writer awarded $5 million in damages for sexual abuse, defamation
NEW YORK — A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former President Donald Trump liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of magazine writer E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages in a widely watched civil trial that sought to apply the accountability of the #Metoo era to a dominant political figure.
The federal jury of six men and three women returned its verdict shortly after 3 p.m. after deliberating for only a few hours. The jury found that Carroll had not proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Trump had raped her, as she had long claimed.
But the jury did find he had sexually abused her. Jury members had the option of finding Trump liable for sexual abuse or for forcible touching, which are less serious charges than rape under state law.
And the jury found that Trump, 76, defamed Carroll when he posted a statement on his Truth Social website in October, calling her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.”
Trump, who is running again for president in 2024, immediately lashed out with a statement on his social media site, claiming again that he does not know Carroll and referring to the verdict as “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.” He promised to appeal.
Carroll sued the former president last year, and she testified at trial that he shoved her against a wall and raped her in a dressing room at the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.
Although more than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct over the years, allegations he has always denied, Carroll’s case is the first of those claims to be successfully tested before a jury.
The jury’s unanimous verdicts came after just under three hours of deliberation in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Its findings are civil, not criminal, meaning Trump has not been convicted of any crime and faces no prison time.
Sexual abuse is defined in New York as subjecting a person to sexual contact without consent. Rape is defined under state law as sexual intercourse without consent,
which involves any penetration of the penis in the vaginal opening.
The judge, Lewis Kaplan, had told the jury before sending it to deliberate that “preponderance of the evidence” standard could be understood as “more likely true than not true.” In a criminal case, when a jury is asked to assess guilt, they must meet a much higher standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The jury also found that Carroll proved that she was injured as a result of Trump’s publication of his denial of her accusations on his Truth Social account in October 2022.
The jury determined that Carroll had proved, by clear and convincing evidence, that Trump knew his statement was false when he said her accusation was a hoax, a legal standard known as “actual malice.”