Trump Is Begging for a New Trial in E. Jean Carroll Case
The former president, found guilty of sexual abuse, is getting desperate.
Donald Trump cannot accept that he was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, and on Thursday asked for a new trial in the decided case.
Trump was unanimously found liable in May for sexual abuse and battery against Carroll in the mid-1990s, and for defaming her in 2022 while denying the assault. He was ordered to pay her about $5 million in damages. Carroll has two more defamation lawsuits against Trump pending: one from 2019 and one from last month, after he bashed her during the CNN town hall.
Trump’s lawyers argued in court documents that he had been charged too much for damages. They said that the $2 million award for sexual abuse was “excessive” because the jury determined Carroll had not been raped and that his assault had not caused her any mental injury.
The lawyers also said the $2.7 million for defamation was “based on pure speculation.” They asked that the total damages either be reduced to $900,000 or that the judge grant an entirely new trial.
Carroll accused Trump in her 2019 memoir of raping her in the Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. She initially sued him twice for defamation: first in 2019, when he said she made up the rape allegation to promote her book, and again in November for posts he made about her on social media.
Carroll is not the only woman to accuse Trump of sexual assault, but her case was the first to make it to a courtroom. Trump continues to vehemently deny all of the allegations and launched fresh vitriol at Carroll during the disastrous CNN town hall last month. So Carroll sued him for defamation again.
Trump and his allies have repeatedly tried to thwart Carroll’s various lawsuits. Last week, a judge denied an attempt to throw out the 2019 defamation suit by Trump ally James H. Brady, who argued that the former president was being unfairly treated because he is a “white Christian.”
And on Monday, Trump and his legal team also requested that the 2019 suit be dismissed, arguing that he couldn’t have defamed Carroll then because he was technically telling the truth when he denied raping her.