E. Jean Carroll wins another victory over Trump after sex-abuse and defamation lawsuit

NEW YORK —  Four months after a civil trial jury found that Donald Trump had sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that more of the ex-president’s claims about her were defamatory. The ruling means an upcoming trial will concern only how much more Trump must pay her.

That trial, set for January, is over remarks Trump made in 2019 after Carroll first publicly accused him of raping her in a luxury department store’s dressing room after a chance meeting in 1996. He denies anything happened between them.

The previous trial, this spring, was over Carroll’s
allegation of sexual assault and whether some statements Trump made about her in 2022 were defamatory. Jurors awarded her $5million, finding that he had sexually abused her but that she hadn’t proven rape.

“The jury 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, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in Wednesday’s decision.

He wrote that the “substantive content” of the 2019 and 2022 statements was the same. And when the jury found that Trump had indeed sexually abused Carroll, it effectively established that his 2019 statements also were false and defamatory, the judge said.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba said Wednesday that his legal team is confident that the jury verdict will be overturned, making the judge’s new decision moot.

Trump, the front-runner in polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is seeking to put the trial on hold while waiting for an appeals court to decide whether he’s legally shielded from the case. He claims immunity because he was president when he made the 2019 comments.

The trial is set to start Jan. 15, the day of the Iowa Republican caucuses.

Carroll’s case is just one of the legal challenges that Trump is facing as he runs.

Four criminal indictments accuse him variously of trying to overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden; mishandling top-secret documents and trying to conceal that he’d done so; and falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn actor during his 2016 campaign.

Some of Trump’s criminal trials are set to overlap with the presidential primaries.

A civil trial is also set for next month over New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James’ lawsuit accusing Trump and his company of defrauding banks, insurers and others by inflating asset values and his net worth. He has denied the allegations, accusing the Democratic attorney general of a political vendetta.

A judge refused on Wednesday to delay that trial, set for next month.

Carroll initially sued Trump in 2019, saying he had smeared her name by saying she’d made a false allegation while “trying to sell a new book” and by suggesting she might be a Democratic operative.

“The world should know what’s really going on. It is a disgrace, and people should pay dearly for such false accusations,” Trump had said. He maintained that he’d never met Carroll, brushing off a 1987 photo of the two and their then-spouses interacting at a social event.

While that case was playing out, Carroll sued again last year under a New York state law that waived a legal time limit for filing sexual assault allegations. That lawsuit — the one that went to trial last year — came to include claims that Trump had defamed Carroll in 2022 by calling the case “a complete con job” and a “scam.” The suit over the 2019 statements remained separate.

Trump, meanwhile, countered with a defamation suit against Carroll for saying, after the verdict, that she was not only sexually abused but raped. The judge dismissed Trump’s suit last month.