Trump Loses Sexual Battery Case Against E. Jean Carroll

A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found Donald Trump liable in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit accusing the former president of sexual battery and defamation.

Less than three hours after deliberations began, the jury reached a mixed verdict, finding Trump liable for sexual abuse but not rape. The jurors also determined that he defamed Carroll when he called her allegations a “con job” in an October 2022 Truth Social post. Carroll was awarded $5 million in total damages for her claims against Trump, including $2 million in compensatory damages for the battery claim.

The nine-person jury started deliberating on Tuesday, a day after closing arguments were made by attorneys representing Trump and Carroll, a former columnist at Elle magazine.

“The verdict is a clear statement by the jurors that Trump engaged in serious misconduct, both the underlying sexual assault and the more recent defamation of Ms. Carroll,” former federal prosecutor and elected state attorney Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek.

He continued: “The total damages of $5 million is a number that’s significant but not overwhelming. It appears to be a measured assessment of the harm inflicted in an emotional and highly charged case where the underlying assault misconduct occurred decades ago.”

Jurors had spent the past two weeks hearing both sides argue over Carroll’s accusation that Trump assaulted and raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room during the 1990s. The former president has denied any wrongdoing.

The civil case required jurors to follow a much lower standard of culpability, finding it “probable” that Trump attacked Carroll as opposed to the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required in criminal cases.

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek that it can sometimes be “tough” for a jury to award damages in a case like Carroll’s “when you’re talking about emotional distress.”

Attorney Jamie White, who represented 13 of the victims in the case against Larry Nassar, the sports doctor who was sentenced to decades in prison for sexually assaulting gymnasts, said that, on average, sexual assault victims are awarded between $800,000 and $3 million.

As a result, “this verdict is a jury sending a message to Mr. Trump,” White told Newsweek in a statement.

“Will it change Mr. Trump’s life? No, but it does send a message that we are not going to tolerate not only sexually abusing someone but defaming them after the fact,” White said. The real damage from this case will be the “political implications” for Trump, he added.

“Independent and moderate voters will view Trump differently after this verdict, even if his 37 percent base of support with the MAGA crowd stays unmoved,” White said.

Trump’s legal team did not call any witnesses to the stand, and the former president did not testify in the trial despite suggesting to reporters last week that he would return to New York City for the case. His attorney in the case, Joe Tacopina, tried to convince the jury that Carroll’s team was using “the art of distraction” by trying to use Trump’s unlikability to make their case.

“They are trying to take parts of Donald Trump you hate and stretch them over her story. If this weren’t about Trump, we wouldn’t be here today. No way,” Tacopina said in his closing arguments.

Newsweek reached out to Tacopina via email for comment.

Shortly after the verdict was announced, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS. THIS VERDICT IS A DISGRACE – A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!”

The criminal statute of limitations had long expired by the time Carroll went public with the accusations in 2019, but she was able to bring a civil case because of a recently passed law in New York. The state’s Adult Survivors Act opened up a one-year window between November 2022 and November 2023 for people to sue alleged assailants even after the statute of limitations had expired. Carroll filed her lawsuit within minutes of the law taking effect last year.

White said, “New York opened a window for previously time-barred claims that allowed Mr. Trump to be sued by Ms. Carroll. As these legal trends continue from state to state, it is possible that other women may see an opportunity to seek justice against Mr. Trump. At least in public reporting, there are multiple other women who have logged complaints.”

To prove her defamation claim, Carroll’s legal team had to convince the jury there was a preponderance of evidence that Trump knew the statements he made last year were false at the time he published them and that he did so with actual malice.

Carroll’s lawyers had said that “this lawsuit is not about the money” but about “getting her good name back.”

“What is the price for decades of living alone without companionship, for having no one to cook dinner with, no one to walk your dog with, no one to watch TV with, and for feeling for decades like you are dirty and unworthy,” attorney Roberta Kaplan said during her closing arguments on Monday.

“I’m not going to put a number on that for you,” Kaplan told the jury.