Jury Sides With Writer Who Says That Trump Sexually Abused Her
Six men and three women found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll but rejected her rape accusation.
Trump is found liable for sexual abuse in civil trial.
A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former President Donald J. Trump liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of the magazine writer E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages in a widely watched civil trial that sought to apply the accountability of the #MeToo era to a dominant political figure.
The federal jury of six men and three women found that Mr. Trump, 76, defamed Ms. Carroll when he posted a statement on his Truth Social website in October, calling her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.”
The jury, in returning its verdict shortly after 3 p.m. said Ms. Carroll had not proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Mr. Trump had raped her, as she had long claimed.
Ms. Carroll sued the former president last year, accusing him of shoving her against a wall and raping her in a dressing room the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan, in the mid 1990s.
Although more than a dozen women have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct over the years, allegations he has always denied, Ms. Carroll’s case is the first of those claims to be successfully tested before a jury.
The jury’s unanimous verdicts came after just under three hours of deliberation in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Its findings are civil, not criminal, meaning Mr. Trump has not been convicted of any crime and faces no prison time.
Sexual abuse is defined in New York as subjecting a person to sexual contact without consent. Rape is defined under state law as sexual intercourse without consent which involves any penetration of the penis in the vaginal opening.
The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, had told the jury before sending it to deliberate that “preponderance of the evidence” standard could be understood as “more likely true than not true.” In a criminal case, when a jury is asked to assess guilt, they must meet a much higher standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The jury also found that Ms. Carroll had proved that she was injured as a result of Trump’s publication of his denial of her accusations on his Truth Social account in October 2022.
The jury determined that Ms. Carroll had proved, by clear and convincing evidence, that Mr. Trump knew his statement was false when he said her accusation was a hoax, a legal standard known as “actual malice.”
Trump had been thriving politically before the verdict and it is not clear how — or whether — the jury’s determination will affect his momentum. Criminal investigations against him have done little to hurt him with his supporters. It remains to be seen whether the verdict will be a different story.
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Here’s a closer look at the $5 million in damages that the jury awarded Carroll.
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The jury determined that Ms. Carroll should be paid a total of $5 million in damages. Here is a breakdown:
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The jury decided that Ms. Carroll proved by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Trump sexually abused her, and that she was injured by a result of his conduct. The jury decided that $2 million would fairly and adequately compensate her for her injuries.
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The jury also decided that Mr. Trump should pay Ms. Carroll $20,000 in punitive damages because his conduct was “willfully or wantonly negligent, reckless, or done with a conscious disregard of the rights of Ms. Carroll, or was so reckless as to amount to such disregard.”
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The jury also found that Mr. Trump defamed Ms. Carroll and that she was injured as a result of his October 2022 Truth Social post. They decided that she should be paid $1 million for damages unrelated to a reputation repair program, and $1.7 million for a reputation repair program only.
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The jury also found that Mr. Trump “acted maliciously, out of hatred, ill will, spite, or wanton, reckless, or willful disregard of the rights of another” and that Ms. Carroll should be paid $280,000.
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What timing: Trump is scheduled to appear at a forum airing on CNN on Wednesday, his first appearance on the network since the 2016 presidential campaign. The network’s morning show co-host, Kaitlan Collins, is set to moderate, taking questions from Republicans and independents.
Carroll brought her lawsuit under the Adult Survivor’s Act, a New York law signed in 2022 that allowed victims of abuse a one-time opportunity to sue those responsible. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said on Tuesday after the verdict, “I was proud to sign the Adult Survivors Act so brave survivors like E. Jean Carroll could have their day in court.”
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E. Jean Carroll described an assault in minute detail.
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Across three days of vivid and sometimes contentious testimony, E. Jean Carroll recounted for a jury the day she said Donald J. Trump attacked her, sparring with a lawyer for the former president as she told her story.
Ms. Carroll, a former magazine columnist, said in a Manhattan federal court that the encounter with Mr. Trump started with banter after he stopped her at the 58th Street exit of the Bergdorf Goodman department store nearly three decades ago.
Ms. Carroll said Mr. Trump asked her to help select a gift for a female friend. “I love to give advice, and here was Donald Trump asking me for advice about buying a present,” she said.
She described to the jury how they went to the lingerie section and stumbled upon a gray-blue bodysuit. Mr. Trump directed her to “go put this on,” she said. She declined and told him to put it on instead — banter that she described as “jesting and joshing.”
Then, she said, Mr. Trump motioned her inside the dressing room, immediately shut the door and shoved her against the wall.
Ms. Carroll said Mr. Trump used his weight to pin her and pulled down her tights. She grew emotional as she spoke. “I was pushing him back,” she said, adding, “I was almost too frightened to think.”
“His fingers went into my vagina, which was extremely painful,” Ms. Carroll said. Then, she said, he inserted his penis.
Ms. Carroll said she used her knee to push Mr. Trump away and fled.
The event had lifelong consequences, she said: “It left me unable to ever have a romantic life again.”
Mr. Trump has denied Ms. Carroll’s allegations. During cross-examination, a lawyer for the former president questioned Ms. Carroll about her politics, the decades it took her to come forward and her inability to recall the year that the alleged attack took place.
Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, insinuated that Ms. Carroll strategically chose to reveal her story to increase sales of a memoir in which she first publicly brought her allegation.
Ms. Carroll, however, said that she decided to go public after The New York Times’s “bombshell” reporting about Harvey Weinstein, which set off the #MeToo movement. She said that telling her story about Mr. Trump might be “a way to change the culture of sexual violence.”
The lawyer pressed Ms. Carroll repeatedly about basic facts, probing for inconsistencies and asking about her inability to remember precisely when in 1995 or 1996 the encounter occurred.
“I wish to heaven we could give you a date,” she replied.
Mr. Tacopina also questioned Ms. Carroll about whether she had screamed for help.
“I’m not a screamer,” Ms. Carroll responded. “I was fighting,” she said. “You can’t beat up on me for not screaming.”
Mr. Tacopina said he was not, but Ms. Carroll, her voice rising, said from the witness stand that women often keep silent about attacks because they fear being asked what they could have done to stop it.
“They are always asked, ‘Why didn’t you scream?’” Ms. Carroll said.
“He raped me, whether I screamed or not,” she declared.
Before discharging the jury, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan suggested to the jurors that they “not identify yourselves, not now and not for a long time.” This jury, composed of six men and three women, has been anonymous throughout the trial, even to the judge and the lawyers. The judge said during jury selection at the end of April that the jurors would be picked up in cars from assembly points and be brought into the courthouse through a garage. He said at the time that it was “all for your protection.”
Trump was first heard discussing assaults on women when the “Access Hollywood” tape became public during the 2016 campaign. When he won the presidential election after that, it seemed as though the tape had ultimately had little impact. But Carroll’s lawyers used the tape to build a damning case against Trump, one that ultimately proved successful, as jurors appear to have accepted the connection between his infamous words then — “when you’re a star, they let you do it” — and his attack on Carroll.
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RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual-violence organization, released a statement after the verdict. “We thank E. Jean Carroll, who will inspire survivors to come forward to tell their stories and face perpetrators,” said the group’s president and founder, Scott Berkowitz. “This case demonstrates that all perpetrators, no matter how powerful, can and will be held accountable.”
The first response from a rival of Trump in the Republican primaries came from a long-shot, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas: “Over the course of my over 25 years of experience in the courtroom, I have seen first hand how a cavalier and arrogant contempt for the rule of law can backfire. The jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.”
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Ashlee Humphreys, an expert in sociology and communications, testified on Carroll’s behalf that it would cost as much as $2.7 million to run a reputational repair campaign for Carroll.
Here is part of the Trump campaign’s first response: “In jurisdictions wholly controlled by the Democratic Party our nation’s justice system is now compromised by extremist left-wing politics. We have allowed false and totally made-up claims from troubled individuals to interfere with our elections, doing great damage.”
The campaign added: “This case will be appealed, and we will ultimately win.”
On Truth Social, Trump responded: “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace — a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!”
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said that for the jury to establish that Trump raped Carroll, she had to prove that Trump engaged in sexual intercourse with her, and that he did it without her consent. The judge said that sexual intercourse includes “any penetration of the penis into the vaginal opening.”
A woman yelled to her, “You’re so brave and beautiful,” to which Carroll said, “Thank you, thank you so much.” She didn’t answer any questions and got in a car to leave.
The jury has found that Carroll did not prove Trump raped her, but they did determine that he had sexually abused her. The jurors also found that Trump had defamed Carroll when he called her accusations false. They awarded her $5 million damages.
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A civil trial differs in key respects from a criminal case.
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The accusation at the heart of the trial that just ended in Manhattan federal court sounds like a classic criminal case — an alleged sexual assault in the dressing room of a luxury department store.
But the jury of nine New Yorkers were not asked to decide if former president Donald J. Trump was guilty of raping the writer E. Jean Carroll as she testified he did in the mid 1990s. No criminal charges were ever brought.
Instead, Ms. Carroll sued Mr. Trump for battery and defamation.
That means the jury was asked to determine Mr. Trump’s “liability” — whether Mr. Trump is legally responsible for harming Ms. Carroll in ways that meet New York State’s definition of battery.
The jurors began their deliberations just before noon on Tuesday. Their verdicts must be unanimous.
To have Mr. Trump found liable for battery, Ms. Carroll must clear a lower bar than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of a criminal trial. Instead, jurors must find that the “preponderance of the evidence” supports Ms. Carroll’s claim to have been raped, sexually abused or forcibly touched by Mr. Trump, meaning the jury believes the accusation is more likely true than untrue. The jury must also decide how much to award Ms. Carroll in damages if they side with her.
The jury also examined Ms. Carroll’s defamation claim, stemming from a 2022 post on Truth Social in which Mr. Trump called Ms. Carroll’s case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.” The jurors have to decide if Mr. Trump knew what he was saying was false but said it anyway to meet a standard known as “actual malice.”
Should the jurors find Mr. Trump liable for defamation, they will also assess what, if any, additional damages to award to Ms. Carroll.
Ms. Carroll has not requested a specific amount of damages she is seeking for her battery claim. Last week, an expert witness called by Ms. Carroll testified it would cost as much as $2.7 million to run a campaign that would repair her reputation.
A verdict has been reached in the E. Jean Carroll v. Trump trial, according to a court spokesman. It will be delivered at 3 p.m. today in the courtroom. The jury began deliberating today shortly before noon.
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During closing arguments on Monday in the civil trial over the writer E. Jean Carroll’s accusation that former President Donald J. Trump raped her, one of her lawyers focused on the man who was missing from the courtroom.
Mr. Trump did not testify on his own behalf or even show up.