A federal jury in New York ordered disgraced former President Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million to columnist E. Jean Carroll as punishment for making defamatory remarks about her in response to her rape accusation.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan previously ruled that Trump defamed Carroll by saying in 2019 that he had never met her and that her book, in which she accused him of having raped her in the dressing room of a luxury department store in the mid-1990s, “should be sold in the fiction section.”
While he was president in 2019, Trump made remarks attacking her character that kicked off years of threats and harassment from the former president’s supporters.
On May 9, 2023, a jury found Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse against Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages, so this is the second panel of citizens to find Trump liable for defamation against Carroll and award her damages.
Most of the award involved $65 million in punitive damages after jurors concluded that Trump acted spitefully and wantonly toward Carroll after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s.
Jurors also awarded a combined $18.3 million in compensatory damages.
The judge told the anonymous jury that while they are now free to speak publicly, he didn’t advise it.
“My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury and I won’t say anything more about it,” said Kaplan.
Trump was found liable for defamatory comments he made after the publication of a book excerpt in which Carroll described being raped by Trump in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s.
Trump called Carroll a liar and suggested a sexual encounter with her was impossible because she was “not my type.”
According to her testimony, Carroll received death threats and other alarming messages from Trump’s supporters. Her “Ask E. Jean” column appeared in Elle magazine from 1993 through 2019, becoming one of the longest-running advice columns in American publishing.
She testified that the harassment continues and she fears for her safety because Trump still makes disparaging comments about her on TV and in social media posts.
The damages awarded Friday came as Trump awaits a decision in another, unrelated case — which could also involve a stiff financial penalty.
Trump and his company face a lawsuit accusing them of a years-long financial fraud. That case stems from a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), who has asked New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, who is hearing the case without a jury, to hand down a $370 million penalty.
Engoron already ruled that Trump and his company broadly committed fraud.
The trial was held to determine whether any illegal acts occurred during the process, and Engoron said he hopes to issue his decision on any penalties by the end of the month.
Trump won the Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire and the Iowa caucuses, even though he was found by a jury to have sexually assaulted Carroll, ruled to have committed business fraud, and faces multiple civil lawsuits in addition to 91 criminal charges contained in four separate indictments.
A group of Colorado voters on Friday asked the Supreme Court to bar Trump from the state’s primary ballot, telling the justices in their brief that he is ineligible to return to the White House after spearheading the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The high court is set to consider on Feb. 8 the unprecedented question of whether a post-Civil War provision of the Constitution disqualifies Trump from holding office.