Donald Trump did not rape former columnist E. Jean Carroll but did sexually abuse her, jurors have ruled.
The former US president was accused of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in a department store then defaming her by stating she made up the story. The verdict was announced on Tuesday, May 9 in a federal courtroom in New York City.
It comes after a nine-person jury spent seven hours deciding the civil claims of battery and defamation in Ms Carroll's case.
The Mirror reports that Ms Carroll, 79, will be awarded a total of $3m in damages, $2.7m of which are compensatory and $280,000 of which are punitive after Mr Trump was found to have defamed E Jean Carroll in October 2022 after he posted on Truth social and called her allegations a "con job."
Former columnist E. Jean Carroll, one of more than a dozen women who accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment, went public in 2019 with her allegation that the Republican raped her in the dressing room of a posh Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. Mr. Trump, who did not attend the trial, had insisted he never sexually assaulted Ms Carroll or knew her.
Mr Trump's lawyer, Joe Tacopina, had told the jury in closing arguments on Monday that Ms Carroll's story was too far fetched to be believed. He said she made it up to fuel sales of a 2019 memoir where she first publicly revealed her claims and to disparage Trump for political reasons.
However, Ms Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, cited excerpts from Trump's October deposition and his notorious comments on a 2005 "Access Hollywood" video in which he said celebrities can grab women between the legs without asking. She urged jurors to believe her client.
"He didn't even bother to show up here in person," Kaplan said, referring to Mr Trump's absence from court during the two weeks of trial.
She said much of what he said in his deposition and in public statements "actually supports our side of the case."
"In a very real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself," she said. "He knows what he did. He knows that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll."
Ms Carroll, 79, testified that she had a chance encounter with Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman store across the street from Trump Tower.
Tacopina told jurors there was no reason to call Mr Trump as a witness when Ms Carroll can't even recall when her encounter with Trump happened.
He told the jury Ms Carroll made up her claims after hearing about a 2012 "Law and Order" episode in which a woman is raped in the dressing room of the lingerie section of a Bergdorf Goodman store.
"They modelled their secret scheme on an episode of one of the most popular shows on television," he said of Ms Carroll.
Two of Ms Carroll's friends testified that she told them about the encounter with Trump shortly after it happened, many years before the "Law and Order".
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