A Federal District Court in Manhattan found former President Donald Trump guilty of sexually abusing and defaming journalist E. Jean Carroll in the fitting room of an upscale New York store in 1996.
The jury, composed of six men and three women, reached the verdict after more than two and a half hours of deliberation. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. The judge in the case, Lewis Caplan, ordered that their identities be withheld because of "a very strong risk that jurors will fear harassment."
The former president did not testify in the proceedings. He denied the accusations and alleged that the writer lied to increase her book sales.
On Truth Social, Trump reacted to the verdict by calling it a "witch hunt" against him and claimed not to know the writer.
Trump was sued for sexual abuse and defamation
In the spring of 1996, the writer sued Trump for sexual abuse and defamation. The columnist alleged that she had been sexually assaulted by the former president in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman store in Manhattan. She accused him of defaming her years later when she publicized the information.
It is important to remember that this is a civil lawsuit, not a criminal trial, so the sentence is a fine; Trump is not convicted of any crime and does not face prison time. Although Carrol's lawsuit would have been time-barred a while ago, she could take it up again thanks to a New York state law allowing people to revive their lawsuits against alleged sex offenders for one year, beginning in November 2022.
The jury's job was to determine whether Carroll's lawyers could prove that Trump committed assault by a preponderance of the evidence (which states that it is more likely than unlikely but not necessarily true).
Her lawyers based their case on the 2005 "Access Hollywood" tape, arguing that it amounted to "a confession" that the former president was in the habit of sexually assaulting women and that he relied on a playbook of sorts to do so. To reinforce this particular point, other women, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, were called as witnesses.
The same tape jeopardized his presidential campaign in 2016, causing the then-candidate to publicly apologize while clarifying that it had been "locker room talk."
Carrol's tears during the trial
Carroll broke down in tears during a hearing when asked if she was glad she had spoken out against Trump. "I've regretted this about 100 times," she asserted. "But in the end, being able to have my day in court, finally, is everything to me. So I'm glad," she continued, interspersing words with tears.
More Trump "truths"
Since the sentence was announced, the former president has voiced his opinions three times on his social media. After his first disclaimer, he assured that he had experienced a "very unfair trial," something he emphasized even more in his last post.
The last message was posted on Tuesday night, when he took the opportunity to criticize the judge in the case and the state of New York itself since he considered that, for partisan reasons, he would never have a fair trial in the Empire State.
"What else can you expect from a Trump-hating, Clinton-appointed judge who went out of his way to make sure the result was as negative as possible, speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair 'trial,'" Trump expressed.
