A jury has awarded $83.3 million in additional damages to former columnist E. Jean Carroll, who claims former President Donald Trump damaged her reputation by calling her a liar after she accused him of sexual assault.
The verdict was returned Friday by a jury of seven men and two women in a trial that Trump attended regularly, although he abruptly left the courtroom during Carroll’s lawyer’s closing arguments, and then returned.
Carroll smiled as the verdict was read. By then, Trump had left the building in his convoy of vehicles.
“Completely ridiculous,” Trump said in a statement shortly after the verdict was announced. He vowed to appeal. “Our legal system is out of control and being used as a political weapon.”
It is the second time in nine months that a jury has returned a verdict related to Carroll’s claim that a casual, flirtatious encounter with Trump in 1996 at a Bergdorf Goodman store ended violently. She said Trump slammed her against the wall of the dressing room, pulled down her socks and raped her.
In May, another jury awarded Carroll $5 million. He considered that Trump was not responsible for raping her, but for sexually abusing Carroll and then defaming her by claiming that she had made it up. Trump has appealed that ruling.
Trump did not appear at the first trial. He later expressed regret for not attending and insisted on testifying at the second trial, although the judge limited what he could say, ruling that he had lost his chance to argue that he was innocent. On Thursday he spent only a few minutes on the witness stand, during which he denied attacking Carroll, and then left the courtroom grumbling, “This isn’t America.”
This new jury was only asked how much Trump, 77, should pay Carroll, 80, for two statements he made as president when answering reporters’ questions after excerpts from the memoir were published in a magazine. of Carroll, a compensation that could not be quantified before due to legal resources.
