USA: A jury has ordered former U.S. President Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to writer E. Jean Carroll for defamatory comments he made about her when he was president.
Carroll sued Trump in 2019 for disparaging her claim that he sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. She had sought at least $10 million from Trump, arguing that he had damaged her reputation as a journalist.
The verdict was delivered Friday by a nine-person jury in New York City, made up of seven men and two women. The jury took about 3 1/2 hours to reach its decision.
Trump took the witness stand Thursday to defend himself against the allegations. He testified that he stood by his 2019 comments that he considered Carroll’s accusations to be false.
Trump, the likely 2024 Republican nominee to run against Democratic President Joe Biden in the November presidential election, has denied even knowing Carroll, now 80.
After the verdict was announced Friday, Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he will appeal the decision. He called the case a “Biden Directed Witch Hunt.”
During the trial, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Trump would not be allowed to testify that he didn’t assault Carroll, a onetime advice columnist for Elle magazine, or that she lied about the assault allegation — because those questions were not before the jury.
This is the second time in less than a year that a jury addressed Carroll’s claim that Trump defamed her by denying that he assaulted her. In May, another jury determined Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s.
That jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million for comments he made in 2022. Trump is appealing that verdict as well.
The current case centered on comments Trump made three years earlier, in 2019, while he was president.
Trump has repeatedly denied knowing Carroll and has said she was not “my type.”
Carroll testified last week, “It means I’m too ugly to assault.”
Trump, 77, has attended much of the trial, even though he was not required to be present in the courtroom. He has treated the case like a campaign stop, holding news conferences at the end of the day to attack Carroll’s claims and Kaplan as being biased against him.
“They are weaponizing law enforcement at a level like never before,” Trump said Sunday night at a New Hampshire rally ahead of the Republican primary election he won in the northeastern state Tuesday.
He said he was intent on being in the courtroom for the conclusion of the case.
“You know where I’m going to be,” he told supporters at the rally. “I don’t have to be there, but I want to be there because otherwise, I can’t get a fair shake. I’m going to be in court.”
The former president was in the courtroom Friday but left during the closing arguments by Carroll’s lawyer. He returned for his own lawyer’s closing arguments. He was not in court when the jury’s verdict was read.
The Carroll defamation claims are in a civil case, and Trump faces no threat of imprisonment. But he does face an unprecedented 91 criminal charges across four indictments in cases that could go to trial this year.
VOA
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