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Jury Finds Ex-US President Trump Liable For Sexual Abuse Of E. Jean Carroll
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Carroll had claimed that Trump raped her in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
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However, the former US president denied the claim, saying she isn’t his type.
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Trump, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, also faces multiple criminal investigations.
Eko Hot Blog reports that a jury in New York, United States (US), has found former President Donald Trump liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll in a civil trial.
The jury also found that Trump defamed Carroll after claiming that she lied about the abuse.
EDITOR’S PICKS
However, the jurors rejected her rape accusation.
Trump was ordered to pay $5 million in damages.
He called the jury’s verdict a “total disgrace,” just as his attorney Joe Tacopina, signalled that his client will appeal the verdict.
The attorney said Trump is “firm in his belief” that he cannot get a fair trial in New York City “based on the jury pool.”
“I think one could argue that that’s probably an accurate assessment, based on what happened today,” Tacopina said.
He noted that there were many issues to for an appeal.
“We made many motions that we thought would create issues for appeal, and we are going to employ them now. You know, there were things that happened in this case that were beyond the pale,” he said.
Earlier on Monday, a lawyer for writer Carroll told jurors that Trump followed a “playbook” he had for kissing and groping women without their consent before he raped Carroll in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
“You must hold him to account for what he’s done,” the lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said, as she delivered the closing argument to jurors in U.S. District Court in Manhattan for a civil trial, where Trump was accused of battery and of defaming the writer.
Writer E. Jean Carroll arrives for her civil trial against former President Donald Trump at Manhattan’s federal court in New York City, May 8, 2023 (Photo: Stephanie Keith | Getty Images)
Trump’s lawyer Joseph Tacopina, in his own summation, called Carroll’s case “a scam,” arguing that “the evidence of this case shows that what E. Jean Carroll has done is an affront to justice.”
“She abused the system by bringing a false claim for money, status and political reasons,” Tacopina said. “She is minimizing real rape and exploiting real pain and suffering and we cannot let her profit to the tune of millions of dollars.”
The trial is taking place as Trump, the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, faces multiple criminal investigations.
About two dozen women have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct over the years.
But Carroll’s lawsuit, which was filed when he was the president, is the first such claim to go to trial. Two other women testified during the trial about Trump groping them in separate incidents years ago.
Carroll testified earlier in the trial that the former president had raped her in a dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan after they had a chance encounter at that store.
Trump, 76, denies raping the now 79-year-old Carroll and has accused her of making up the story for political and financial reasons.
Meanwhile, he was criminally charged last month by the Manhattan District Attorney for allegedly falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment his then-lawyer made to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, before the election that year.
He has pleaded not guilty in that case.
FURTHER READING
Trump also faces multiple criminal investigations for his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, and in connection with failing to surrender government records, many of them classified, when he left the White House.
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