E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case
A jury ordered former US President Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to author E. Jean Carroll for defamatory comments he made about her while he was president.
Sexual comments
E. Jean Carroll sued Trump in 2019, claiming he sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. She has sought at least $10 million from Trump, saying he has damaged her reputation as a journalist.
The verdict was reached on Friday by a nine-person jury in New York City, made up of seven men and two women. The jury took about three and a half hours to reach its decision.
Trump took the witness stand on Thursday to defend himself against the charges. He testified that he stood by his 2019 statements that Carroll’s allegations were false.
Trump, who is likely to be the Republican nominee to run against Democratic President Joe Biden in the November presidential election in 2024, has denied knowing E. Jean Carroll, 80.
After the verdict was announced on Friday, Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he would appeal the verdict. He called the case a “Biden-directed witch hunt.”
During the trial, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Trump could not testify that he did not attack E. Jean Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, or that Carroll was lying about the assault allegation. , because these issues were not raised before the jury.
This is the second time in less than a year that a jury has heard Carroll’s claim that Trump defamed her by denying that he assaulted her. Last May, another jury found Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.
The jury in that case ordered Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages for comments he made in 2022. Trump also appealed the verdict.
The current case focuses on comments made by Trump when he was president in 2019.
Trump has repeatedly denied knowing E. Jean Carroll and said she was not “my type.”
“It means I’m too ugly to be violated,” E. Jean Carroll testified last week.
Trump, 77, attended much of the trial, although he was not required to appear. He treated the case as a campaign, holding a news conference at the end of the trial day to attack Carroll’s claims and criticize Kaplan for being biased against him.
“They’re weaponizing law enforcement to an unprecedented degree,” Trump said Sunday night at a rally in New Hampshire, where he won the Republican primary on Tuesday.
He said at the time that he planned to appear in court at the conclusion of the case.
“You know where I’m going,” he told supporters at the rally. “I don’t have to be there, but I want to be there because otherwise I’m not going to get a fair shake. I’m going to be in court.”
The former president was in court Friday but left during closing arguments from Carroll’s attorneys. He returned to attend his own attorney’s closing arguments. He was also not in the courtroom when the jury’s verdict was read.
E. Jean Carroll’s defamation charge is a civil matter, and Trump will not face jail time. But he does face an unprecedented 91 criminal charges in four indictments that could go to trial this year.
Who is E. Jean Carroll?
Elizabeth Jean Carroll, born on December 12, 1943, is an American journalist, author, and advice columnist. Renowned for her enduring “Ask E. Jean” column in Elle magazine from 1993 to 2019, she holds the record for one of the longest-running advice columns in American publishing.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, to inventor Thomas F. Carroll Jr. and Republican politician Betty Carroll, Elizabeth was the eldest of four siblings. Raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, she was nicknamed “Betty Jean,” “Jeannie,” and “Betty” during her childhood. Carroll, an Indiana University alumna, was a Pi Beta Phi member, a cheerleader, and even crowned Miss Indiana University in 1963. In 1964, she won the Miss Cheerleader USA title as a university representative and appeared on the game show “To Tell the Truth.”
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