President-elect loses appeal in E Jean Carroll case over alleged 1990s assault, must pay $5 million.
US President-elect Donald Trump has lost an appeal to a 2023 jury saying he was liable for sexual abuse and defamation in connection with an alleged assault on writer E Jean Carroll in the 1990s.
On Monday, a federal appeals court upheld the 2023 ruling in the civil case, in which Trump was not found to have committed rape but was ordered to pay Carroll $2.02 million for sexual assault and $2.98 million for slander.
Carroll had accused Trump of raping her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996. She detailed the alleged assault in a 2019 op-ed, prompting a denial from then-President Trump via spokesman of the White House.
Carroll first filed a defamation lawsuit in 2019 and a second, separate lawsuit alleging defamation and rape in November 2022. The second lawsuit came after Trump called the lawsuits a “complete work of fraud” and claimed he “had no idea” of who Carroll was. He further derided the legal action as a “fraud”.
Monday’s decision is related to the second lawsuit Carroll filed. In January of this year, Trump was separately ordered to pay $83.3 million in a defamation case in 2019. Trump is also appealing that ruling.
Because both cases are civil rather than criminal, the jury technically found Trump “liable” but not guilty of the allegations.
The cases have continued despite Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election. He will begin his second four-year term in the White House on January 20, having previously served as president from 2017 to 2021.
Trump was convicted earlier this year in a separate criminal trial in New York of falsifying business records in an attempt to cover up hush money payments to an adult film star. Following his victory, the sentence in that case was suspended.
Trump’s victory helped him avoid two more federal criminal cases against him, including one related to the concealment and collection of classified White House documents and another for his alleged role in trying to overturn the results of 2020 election. Under long-standing US Department of Justice policy, a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.
A fourth criminal case in Georgia related to alleged efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results has also been thrown into limbo following Trump’s election victory.
However, Trump is not immune from all legal action.
In 1997, in a case involving former President Bill Clinton, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that sitting presidents are not immune from civil lawsuits in federal court over actions unrelated to their official duties. as president.
