NEW YORK (AP) – A jury found Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding him $5 million in a lawsuit that could haunt the former president as he campaigns for take back the White House.
The verdict adds to Trump’s legal woes and offers vindication to Carroll, whose accusations had been mocked and dismissed by Trump for years. He nodded as the verdict was announced in a New York City federal courtroom a few hours later deliberations had begun He hugged fans and smiled through tears.
Jurors also found Trump liable for defaming Carroll after she went public with her allegations. Trump chose not to attend the civil trial and was absent when the verdict was read.
Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, shook Carroll’s hand and hugged his lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. As the courtroom cleared, Carroll could be heard laughing and crying.
Trump immediately hit back with a statement on his social media site, again claiming he doesn’t know Carroll and calling the verdict “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the biggest witch hunt of all time.” He promised to appeal.
The result of the trial was a validation for Carroll, one of more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment. In 2019, she went public with her allegation that the Republican raped her in the dressing room of a posh Manhattan department store.
Trump, 76, denied it, saying he never met Carroll at the store and didn’t know her. He has called her a “job” who made up a “fraudulent and false story” to sell a memoir.
Carroll, 79, had sought unspecified damages, as well as a retraction of what he said were Trump’s defamatory denials of his claims.
The trial revisited the lightning rod issue of Trump’s conduct toward women.
Carroll gave several days of candid, sometimes emotional testimony, supported by two friends who told jurors he reported the alleged attack to them in the moments and the next day.
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Jurors also heard from Jessica Leeds, a former stockbroker who testified that Trump groped her against her will on a plane in the 1970s, and from Natasha Stoynoff, a writer who said Trump kissed her in force against his will while he was being interviewed article 2005.
The jury of six men and three women also saw the notorious 2005 “Access Hollywood” hot mic recording of Trump talking about kissing and groping women without asking.
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward, as have Carroll, Leeds and Stoynoff.
The verdict comes as Trump faces an accelerating whirlwind of legal risks.
He is fighting a New York criminal case related to hush money payments made to a porn actor. The state attorney general has sued him, his family and his business for alleged financial crimes.
Trump is also grappling with investigations elsewhere into his possible mishandling of classified documents, his actions after the 2020 election and his activities during the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump denies having done wrong in all these matters.
Carroll, who wrote an advice column for Elle magazine for 27 years, has also written for magazines and “Saturday Night Live.” She and Trump were in overlapping social circles at a 1987 party, where a photo documented them and their spouses interacting. Trump has said he doesn’t remember.
According to Carroll, he ended up in a dressing room with Trump after they ran into each other at Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified Thursday evening in the spring of 1996.
They made an impromptu trip to the lingerie department so he could look for a feminine gift, and soon they were teasing each other about trying on skimpy jumpsuits, Carroll testified. She thought it was comedy, something similar to her 1986 “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which a man admires himself in a mirror.
But then, she said, Trump closed the door, pinned her against a wall, planted his mouth on hers, removed her pantyhose and raped her as she tried to pull away. Carroll said she eventually nudged him with her knee and immediately left the store.
“I always think why I went in there to put myself in that situation,” he testified, his voice cracking, “but I’m proud to say I got out.”
She soon confided in two friends, according to her and them. But she never called the police or told anyone else, or wrote it down in her diary, until her memoir was published in 2019.
Carroll said she remained silent out of fear that Trump would retaliate, out of shame and out of a sense that other people silently denigrate rape victims and see them as responsible for being targeted.
Trump weighed in on the case from afar, calling it “a made-up scam” in a social media post early in the trial. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan called the comments “completely inappropriate” and warned that the former president could cause himself more legal trouble if he continued.
Tacopina told the jury that Carroll made up his claims after hearing about a 2012 episode of “Law & Order” in which a woman is raped in the underwear section of a Bergdorf Goodman store.
Carroll “can’t produce any objective evidence to support his claim because it didn’t happen,” he told jurors. He accused her of “advancing a false rape claim for money, political reasons and status.”
Questioning Carroll, he sought to challenge her description of fighting the much heavier Trump without dropping her handbag or ripping off her tights, and without anyone hearing or seeing them in the retailer’s underwear section. luxury
The attorney pressured her, on her own, without screaming, seeking help as she fled the store, or seeking medical attention, security video, or the police.
Carroll chided him.
“I’m telling you he raped me, whether I screamed or not,” she said.
There is no chance that Trump will be charged with attacking Carroll, as the legal deadline has long since passed.
For similar reasons, she initially filed her civil case as a defamation suit, saying that Trump’s disparaging denials had subjected her to hatred, destroyed her reputation and damaged her career.
Then, starting last fall, New York state gave people a chance to sue over sexual assault allegations that would otherwise be too old. Carroll was one of the first to introduce it.
