A jury has awarded $83.3 million US in additional damages to former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll from former U.S. president Donald Trump, who she says shattered her reputation and opened her to threats by calling her a liar who only accused him of sexual assault to sell a memoir.
The award, when coupled with a $5 million sexual assault and defamation verdict last year from another jury in a case brought by Carroll, raised to $88.3 million what Trump must pay her. Protesting vigorously, he said he would appeal.
Carroll clutched her lawyers’ hands and smiled as the seven-man, two-woman jury delivered its verdict. Emotional afterward, she shared a three-way hug with her lawyers. She declined comment as she left the Manhattan federal courthouse.
Trump had left the courthouse about a half hour before the verdict was read. He had remained for more than two hours while the jury deliberated.
“Absolutely ridiculous!” he said in a statement shortly afterward. “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon,” he said.
Jurors deliberated less than three hours after the trial.
Friday’s verdict was the second time in nine months that a civil jury addressed Carroll’s claim that Trump assaulted her in a New York City department store in 1996. Another jury last May found Trump liable for sexual abuse and ordered him to pay $5 million US.
This defamation trial was over things Trump said about Carroll while he was president. Trump continues to insist he was falsely accused.
The jury began working in the afternoon after closing arguments, punctuated by Trump’s dramatic exit from the courtroom as one of Carroll’s lawyers spoke. He later returned as his lawyer defended him over statements he made while president in June 2019, and he remained until deliberations began shortly before 2 p.m. ET.
An ask for an ‘unusually high’ award
Carroll’s lawyers had requested $24 million in compensatory damages and “an unusually high punitive award.” The jury awarded $18.3 million in compensatory damages and another $65 million in punitive damages — meant to deter future behaviour.
Her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, urged jurors in her closing argument Friday to punish Trump enough that he would stop a steady stream of public statements smearing Carroll as a liar and a “whack job.”
Trump shook his head vigorously as Kaplan spoke, then suddenly stood and walked out, taking Secret Service agents with him. His exit came only minutes after the judge, without the jury present, threatened to send Trump lawyer Alina Habba to jail for continuing to talk when he told her she was finished.
“You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Now sit down,” the judge told Habba, who immediately complied.
The trial reached its conclusion as Trump marches toward winning the Republican presidential nomination a third consecutive time. He has sought to turn his various trials and legal vulnerabilities into an advantage, portraying them as evidence of a weaponized political system.
Though there’s no evidence that U.S. President Joe Biden or anyone in the White House has influenced any of the legal cases against him, Trump’s line of argument has resonated with his most loyal supporters who view the proceedings with skepticism.
‘He shattered my reputation’
Carroll testified early in the trial that Trump’s public statements had led to death threats.
“He shattered my reputation,” she said. “I am here to get my reputation back and to stop him from telling lies about me.”
She said she’d had an electronic fence installed around the cabin in upstate New York where she lives, warned neighbours of the threats and bought bullets for a gun she keeps by her bed.
“Previously, I was known as simply as a journalist and had a column, and now I’m known as the liar, the fraud, and the whack job,” Carroll testified.
Trump’s lawyer, Habba, told jurors that Carroll had been enriched by her accusations against Trump and achieved fame she had craved. Habba said no damages were warranted.
To support Carroll’s request for millions in damages, Northwestern University sociologist Ashlee Humphreys told the jury that Trump’s 2019 statements had caused between $7.2 million and $12.1 million in harm to Carroll’s reputation.
When Trump finally testified, Kaplan gave him little room to manoeuvre, because Trump could not be permitted to try to revive issues settled in the first trial.
“It is a very well-established legal principle in this country that prevents do-overs by disappointed litigants,” Kaplan said.
“He lost it and he is bound. And the jury will be instructed that, regardless of what he says in court here today, he did it, as far as they’re concerned. That is the law,” Kaplan said shortly before Trump testified.