Trump loses appeal of E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict

A federal appeals court in New York on Thursday upheld a civil jury verdict that found President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, and which ordered him to pay her $5 million in damages.

A three-judge appeals panel in its unanimous ruling said it concluded that Trump “had not demonstrated that the district court” judge who presided over his trial “erred in any of the challenged rulings.”

“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,” wrote the panel the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Trump was appealing a May 2023 verdict by a jury in Manhattan federal court.

That jury found him liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a New York City department store in the 1990s, and for defaming her in late 2022 when he denied her allegation. Trump was not president at the time he made the statements that led to the defamation verdict in that case.

A second jury in the same courthouse in January 2024 found Trump civilly liable for defaming Carroll in statements he made in June 2019, when he was president, after she first went public with her claim that he had raped her at the Bergdorf Goodman store.

The jury in that second case ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages. Trump is appealing that verdict.

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