Jury finds that Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll, awards $5 million in damages

NEW YORK – A civil jury in New York found Tuesday that former president Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, a writer who has accused him of assaulting her in the mid-1990s.

Jurors deliberated for a little under three hours before siding with Carroll, awarding her a combined $5 million in damages. The verdict was an undeniable victory for Carroll, who testified during the trial that Trump violently assaulted her and, years later, unleashed further trauma by ridiculing her as a liar once she spoke out.

For Trump, the verdict was a striking defeat, the latest legal setback as he seeks another term in the White House and faces a separate criminal case in New York and ongoing investigations in Washington and Fulton County, Georgia. Trump, 76, has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual assault or misconduct over the years, but never before had any of those claims been fully litigated in court and decided by a jury. He assailed the verdict as a “disgrace,” and his representatives said Trump would appeal.

The trial was closely watched around the country, including by some of the other women who have accused Trump of wrongdoing.

“It vindicates all of us,” Mindy McGillivray, who claims that Trump grabbed her backside, said in an interview Tuesday. “I couldn’t be more happy.”

Amy Dorris, who accused Trump of forcibly kissing and groping her at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1997, said she felt deep satisfaction at the outcome.

“Finally,” Dorris said. “He’s officially an actual predator.”

Carroll first publicly accused Trump of rape in 2019, during his presidency, repeating these allegations in her writing, court filings and media interviews. Trump has responded with vehement denials, including a statement he posted on social media last year dismissing the allegations as a “Hoax and a lie.” Carroll then sued him for battery and defamation.

While jurors found for Carroll on both of those claims, they did not find that she convinced them Trump raped her.

Joe Tacopina, an attorney for Trump, said after the verdict that the former president did not believe he could get a fair trial in New York. He sought to frame the outcome as at least a partial victory, given that jurors found that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll but did not find that he raped her.

“We’re, in one sense, gratified, and I know some people in this camp are very happy that the rape claim was rejected,” Tacopina told reporters outside the courthouse.

Carroll, 79, praised the jury’s verdict, saying that she sued Trump hoping to reclaim her life.

“Today, the world finally knows the truth,” Carroll said in a statement. “This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”

During the two-week trial in Lower Manhattan, Carroll testified in sometimes graphic detail about how what she described as a chance encounter with Trump soon gave way to a horrifying attack.

In Carroll’s account, she and Trump happened to bump into each other at Bergdorf Goodman, an upscale Manhattan department store, in the mid-1990s. They recognized one another, she said: Trump was a celebrity real estate mogul and tabloid regular, while Carroll was an advice columnist with a show on cable news.

Trump said he wanted help picking out a gift for another woman, so she went along, Carroll said. In her testimony, she recounted flirting with Trump and described him as “very personable.”

They went into a dressing room, Carroll alleged, where Trump quickly attacked her, forcing his fingers and then his penis inside her vagina. Carroll said she kneed him and fled, telling two friends and then remaining silent until 2019.

The incident cast a grave shadow over Carroll’s life, she testified. She told jurors she felt guilty about what happened and was unable to have romantic relationships or sex with men.

Carroll said she had feared what would happen to her reputation if she spoke out and worried about Trump lashing out. But she said the #MeToo movement helped motivate her to publicly accuse Trump, and she revealed her allegations in a 2019 memoir. Then, she said, “my worst nightmare came true,” when Trump denounced her as a fraud.

Carroll filed her first defamation suit against Trump that year, but that case is unresolved. The Justice Department has argued that Trump made the remark in response to media inquiries while he was president, suggesting that the government, not Trump, should be the defendant. A decision in that matter is still pending.

Last year, Carroll filed her second lawsuit, this one under a new law in New York known as the Adult Survivors Act, which offered a one-year window for people to sue over alleged sexual assaults from years earlier.

Because it was a civil lawsuit, not a criminal matter, Trump is liable for damages but faced no jail time. He also did not face the possibility of a criminal record. Carroll’s lawyers did not have to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard in criminal trials. Instead, Carroll’s side largely had to prove her allegations by what is known as a preponderance of evidence – essentially, that it was more likely the claims were true than not.

In reaching their verdict, the jurors concluded that Carroll had not proved, by a preponderance of evidence, that Trump raped her, as she long claimed. But they did find she proved by that standard that he sexually abused and injured her, awarding her $2 million in damages for her injuries. They also awarded $20,000 in punitive damages after concluding that Trump acted recklessly.

The jury also agreed that Carroll proved, by the same standard, that Trump’s statement on social media last year was defamatory and injured her. Carroll additionally was required to prove that Trump’s statement was false and made with actual malice by a different standard known as “clear and convincing evidence.” That effectively means she had to convince jurors that those claims were highly probable, a higher standard than required on the other claims, but still less strict than the standard needed in criminal cases. Jurors agreed that she met that threshold on both counts.

Jurors awarded Carroll $2.7 million after finding that Trump injured her with his statement, and $280,000 in punitive damages after determining that he acted in a malicious or reckless way.

The jury was made of up six men and three women, all of whom were kept anonymous at the direction of U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who cited Trump’s rhetoric in other matters, including a criminal case in Manhattan, in saying before the trial that jurors could face harassment if their names were made public.

Now that the trial has concluded, the jurors are free to identify themselves publicly. But Kaplan encouraged them not to do so, an unusual admonition that reflected the highly charged atmosphere surrounding the former president.

“My advice to you is not to identify yourselves – not now and not for a long time,” the judge said after the verdict.

Tacopina was critical of Kaplan’s choice to shield the jurors’ identities, suggesting that even in organized-crime trials, attorneys generally know the names of those in the jury box.

Trump was under no obligation to testify during this trial, and he did not take the stand. He did comment on the case from afar, posting to social media during the proceedings and calling Carroll’s allegations fictional. Trump also indicated to reporters at one point that he would travel to Manhattan to “confront” Carroll, which Tacopina strongly suggested in court would not happen. Trump ultimately stayed away from the trial.

The former president’s defense team did not call any witnesses, instead making its case through questioning of Carroll and others called to the stand, as well as opening and closing remarks.

Tacopina told jurors that Carroll’s accusation was just designed to sell books and concocted with friends who loathed Trump. He said her account was filled with inconsistencies and unrealistic details.

Tacopina questioned Carroll’s contention that she and Trump were on an empty floor of Bergdorf Goodman, a popular store. He quizzed her on why she called friends, rather than police, and expressed disbelief that one of those friends never mentioned it again, even when spending election night in 2016 with Carroll, watching Trump win the presidency. Tacopina also told jurors that Carroll never went to police because that would have led to “a real investigation,” suggesting that would have undercut her claims.

During one particularly charged moment, Tacopina pressed Carroll on her contention that she never screamed during the alleged attack.

With frustration in her voice, Carroll responded, “He raped me whether I screamed or not!”

Recordings from Trump’s deposition were played in court, including a portion in which he repeated his suggestion that he finds Carroll unattractive. Trump has dismissed Carroll as “not my type,” echoing a pattern in which he has ridiculed the physical appearances of his other accusers. During his deposition, however, Trump also mistook a photograph of Carroll for Marla Maples, his ex-wife.

Jurors in the case also heard his words on the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording, first published by The Washington Post in 2016, in which Trump talks in graphic terms about grabbing women by their genitals. And they heard testimony from two other women – Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff – both of whom separately also accused Trump of forcing himself on them.

Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, sought to knit these accounts together for jurors, depicting these details and allegations – lunging at women and grabbing them without their consent – as Trump’s “modus operandi.”

Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, told jurors during her closing arguments that they could believe Carroll, who told a “consistent” story, or Trump, “a nonstop liar.” Tacopina, meanwhile, said Trump’s only story in the case was that Carroll’s claims were made up.

Trump, posting on social media after the verdict, again said he did not know Carroll, while his presidential campaign released a statement arguing that the case was part of a “never-ending witch-hunt” conducted by his political opponents to weaken him electorally.

“This case will be appealed, and we will ultimately win,” the statement said.

Though this trial is over, Trump still faces a tangle of other legal and investigative inquiries, including a criminal indictment charging falsification of business records in Manhattan, and investigations into his handling of classified material and efforts to block Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. New York’s attorney general has also filed a civil lawsuit accusing Trump and some of his adult children of committing fraud at their namesake company.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in all matters, saying his investigators and critics are politically biased.