U.S. appeals court won’t reconsider Trump’s US$5M loss in sex assault case

E. Jean Carroll exits the New York Federal Court on Sept. 6, 2024. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / AP Photo)

NEW YORK - Donald Trump failed to persuade a federal appeals court to reconsider the US$5 million verdict won by E. Jean Carroll after a jury found that the U.S. president sexually abused and defamed the former magazine columnist in the 1990s.

In an 8-2 vote, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Friday left intact its Dec. 30 decision by a three-judge panel upholding the jury award.

Carroll, now 81, accused Trump of attacking her around 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan, and defaming her in an October 2022 Truth Social post by denying her claim as a hoax.

In his denial, which repeated a similar denial in June 2019, Trump said the former Elle columnist was “not my type” and made up the rape claim to promote her memoir.

Jurors decided in May 2023 that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll, and had defamed her by lying. They did not find that Trump raped Carroll, as she had claimed.

The president, who turns 79 on Saturday, is separately asking the appeals court to throw out an US$83.3 million jury verdict in January 2024 for defaming Carroll and damaging her reputation when the Republican first denied her rape claim.

Oral arguments are scheduled for June 24. A further appeal of the US$5 million verdict would go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A spokesman for Trump’s lawyers said in a statement that Americans “demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed.”

The US$5 million verdict included US$2.98 million for defamation and US$2.02 million for sexual assault.

Carroll is “very pleased” with Friday’s order, her lawyer Roberta Kaplan said in a statement. “Although President Trump continues to try every possible maneuver to challenge the findings of two separate juries, those efforts have failed.”

Dissent challenges evidence rulings

Circuit Judges Steven Menashi and Michael Park, both appointed by Trump, dissented from the order.

Menashi wrote that evidence in the case “makes it more likely that President Trump believed that the lawsuit had been concocted by his political opposition - and therefore that he was not speaking with actual malice.”

The judge also said the panel also improperly allowed “stale” trial testimony about Trump’s alleged groping of businesswoman Jessica Leeds on a plane in the late 1970s.

In seeking reconsideration, Trump maintained that the trial judge erred in letting jurors review a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video of him bragging about his sexual prowess.

He also challenged a “pile-on” of inflammatory evidence that he mistreated Leeds and former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff, who accused Trump of forcibly kissing her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.

Trump has denied Leeds’ and Stoynoff’s claims.

In seeking to overturn the US$83.3 million verdict, Trump argued that the Supreme Court’s decision last July providing him substantial criminal immunity shields him from liability in Carroll’s civil case.

The verdict included US$18.3 million of damages for emotional and reputational harm, and US$65 million of punitive damages.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Howard Goller)

Jonathan Stempel, Reuters