In a civil lawsuit, a federal appeals court on Monday affirmed a jury’s verdict that Donald Trump had sexually assaulted a woman in a changing room at a high-end department shop in the mid-1990s.
The Manhattan jury granted E. Jean Carroll $5 million for defamation and sexual abuse, and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this decision in a written judgment. The longtime magazine columnist had testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly encounter in spring 1996 into a violent attack after they playfully entered the store’s dressing room.
After consistently denying the attack ever occurred, Trump chose not to attend the trial. However, he gave a brief statement during a follow-up trial earlier this year, which led to an award of $83.3 million. Following Carroll’s initial public claims in a memoir, then-President Trump’s remarks in 2019 led to the second trial.
The appeals court’s three-judge majority dismissed arguments from Trump’s attorneys that trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan had ruined the trial by allowing two other women who had accused Trump of sexually abusing them to speak, among other decisions.
Additionally, the court permitted the jury to watch the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, on which Trump boasted in 2005 about grabbing women’s genitalia because “you can do anything” when you’re famous.
The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals’ three-judge panel was in disagreement. “We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” they stated.
“Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.” Another jury granted T. Carroll $83 million in a different complaint she filed against Trump.
Trump has challenged the decision, and Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung stated that the Republican would file a second appeal against the $5 million damages granted in the case including sexual abuse and defamation.
