Donald Trump’s forthcoming civil trial over comments about the writer E Jean Carroll and her allegation that he raped her will only concern how much more he has to pay, a judge said on Wednesday, ruling that the comments were libelous.
The trial, set for January, is the second in the case. In the first, earlier this year, Trump was found liable for defamation and sexual abuse, regarding Carroll’s allegation that he assaulted her in the changing rooms of a New York department store in the mid-1990s. He was then ordered to pay damages of $5m.
The US district court judge in the case, Lewis Kaplan, has said Trump was adjudicated a rapist.
In his ruling on Wednesday, Kaplan said: “The jury [in the first trial] considered and decided issues that are common to both cases – including whether Mr Trump falsely accused Ms Carroll of fabricating her sexual assault charge and, if that were so, that he did it with knowledge that this accusation was false” or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
The forthcoming trial concerns remarks Trump made in 2019, while president, after Carroll first publicly claimed that he attacked her in the luxury department store dressing room, an allegation he denies.
The first trial concerned the sexual assault allegation itself and whether more recent Trump comments were defamatory. In that case, jurors awarded Carroll around $5m, also finding that she was sexually abused.
On Wednesday, Kaplan said that by finding that Trump had sexually abused Carroll, the jury in the first trial effectively established that his 2019 statements also were false and defamatory.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said she and her fellow attorneys “look forward to trial limited to damages for the original defamatory statements Donald Trump made”.
Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said his legal team was confident the jury verdict would be overturned, mooting the judge’s new decision.
Trump is seeking to delay the January trial, which is scheduled to clash with the start of the Republican presidential primary.
In that contest, the former president leads national and key-state polling by wide margins, despite a catalogue of legal jeopardy that also includes civil investigations of his business practices and an unprecedented 91 criminal charges under four separate indictments.
Those charges are broken down as follows: federal election subversion (four), state election subversion (13), hush-money payments during the 2016 election (34), and retention of classified information (40).
Digesting news of Trump’s latest courtroom blow in his battle with Carroll, Harry Litman, a former US attorney turned law professor and analyst, called the news “not unexpected but pretty huge”.
Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor turned MSNBC analyst, said: “Trump loses to E Jean Carroll … AGAIN! Accountability IS coming home to roost, first in civil case and then in the criminal cases. Trump’s walls continue to crumble. Let the accountability flood in.”
• This article was amended on 7 September 2023 because an earlier version said that in the first case Trump was “fined $5m”. To clarify: he was ordered to pay damages of $5m.
