A federal jury on Friday ordered former President Donald Trump to pay more than $83 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll for defamatory remarks he made in 2019 after the columnist published a magazine article accusing him of raping her in a New York department store.
Jurors deliberated for nearly three hours before returning to the courtroom with their decision.
The verdict includes $11 million in compensatory damages to repair Ms. Carroll’s reputation, more than $7 million in other compensatory damages and a whopping $65 million in punitive damages.
At a previous trial, a jury awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million after finding Mr. Trump liable for sex abuse in the alleged 1996 incident, and for defamation claims tied to comments he made in 2022. The jury rejected Ms. Carroll’s rape allegation.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the liability finding from the first trial would carry over to the second trial, so jurors need only determine how much more Mr. Trump should pay, if anything.
Mr. Trump, in a statement through his presidential campaign, called the results of the trials “absolutely ridiculous.”
“I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party,” he said.
As the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner, Mr. Trump says the accusation was fabricated to hurt his political ambitions.
“Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights,” he said before turning to all capital letters to say: “this is not America!”
Mr. Trump fumed throughout the proceedings over the limits on his ability to contest Ms. Carroll’s underlying claim. The former president did not attend the initial trial.
Earlier Friday, Mr. Trump stormed out of the Manhattan courtroom as lawyers for Ms. Carroll delivered closing arguments, injecting drama into the closing hours of the case.
Just minutes after Ms. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, began her summation, Mr. Trump rose from his seat at the defense table and walked toward the exit, pausing to scan the packed courtroom as members of the Secret Service leaped up to follow him out.
The unexpected departure prompted Judge Kaplan to speak up, briefly interrupting the closing argument to say: “The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom.”
Mr. Trump left after Ms. Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, said: “Donald Trump has tried to normalize conduct that is abnormal.”
She told jurors that the current case was not about sexual assault.
“We had that case,” she said, referencing the first trial. “That’s why Donald Trump’s testimony was so short yesterday. He doesn’t get a do-over this time.”
Mr. Trump eventually returned for his side’s closing argument from defense attorney Alina Habba.
Ms. Habba played a video of Mr. Trump calling the case a witch hunt.
“You know why he has not wavered?” Ms. Habba asked the jury. “Because it’s the truth.”
That statement prompted an objection that the judge sustained with a warning that “if you violate my instructions again, Ms. Habba, you may have consequences.”
Jurors in this trial awarded damages based on 2019 comments in which Mr. Trump rejected Ms. Carroll’s claims of an assault by, among othr things, declaring that “she’s not my type.”
Ms. Kaplan said the jury should award $12 million to repair Ms. Carroll’s reputation and another $12 million for the suffering she has endured because of Mr. Trump’s attacks. Then she said an “unusually high punitive award” was also necessary against a man worth billions of dollars “to have any hope of stopping Donald Trump.”
The jury appeared to agree on the punitive side.
Mr. Trump had testified for less than five minutes Thursday, saying he “just wanted to defend myself” when he criticized Ms. Carroll five years ago for making the rape accusation in a magazine article.
Judge Kaplan limited what Mr. Trump could say on the witness stand because the previous trial found him liable.
The former president lashed out on his social media platform earlier Friday, calling the trial a “sham” and a “disgrace to our country.”
“I don’t know who this woman is, I don’t know who she is, where she came from,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We cannot let our country go into this abyss.”
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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