Tag: Lewis A. Kaplan

A federal jury on Friday said Donald Trump must pay E. Jean Carroll a total of $83.3 million in damages for defaming her in statements he made as president after the writer said he had raped her in a New York department store in the 1990s.

The massive civil verdict — which comes on top of a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation verdict that Carroll won against Trump last year — was delivered less than three hours after the nine-member jury began deliberating in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Trump was not in court for the reading of the unanimous verdict on compensatory and punitive damages by the anonymous jury at 4:40 p.m. ET.

But shortly afterward, he said in a social media post that he would appeal it.

“This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down, and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down,” Carroll said in a statement.

Her attorney Roberta Kaplan said, “Today’s verdict proves that the law applies to everyone in our country, even the rich, even the famous, even former presidents. There is a way to stand up to someone like Donald Trump who cares more about wealth, fame, and power than respecting the law.”

Jurors awarded Carroll $7.3 million for compensatory damages for emotional harm, and another $11 million for compensatory damages to her reputation. Compensatory damages are awarded for actual losses suffered by someone.

They then awarded her another $65 million in punitive damages after finding that Trump in a June 21, 2019, statement about Carroll had “acted maliciously, out of hatred, ill will or spite, vindictively or out of wanton, reckless, or willful disregard of Ms. Carroll’s right.”

Trump in those comments and others since then has denied ever meeting Carroll, suggested she made her claim to sell a book, and said she was not “my type.”

Punitive damages are meant to punish wrongdoing by a defendant.

Earlier Friday, Carroll’s lawyer in her closing argument had urged jurors to award her a “very large” amount of money, to make the billionaire former president “stop” slandering her.

“He doesn’t care about the law or truth but does care about money, and your decision on punitive damages is the only hope that he stops,” Kaplan said.

“How much will it take to make him stop? You cost him lots and lots of money,” she said.

Trump in a social media post on his TruthSocial site after the verdict wrote, “Absolutely ridiculous!”

“I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party,” wrote Trump, who is the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination.

“Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”

Trump so far has not received much help from appeals courts in challenging the two separate lawsuits by Carroll before they went to trial.

But it is possible that on appeal of the verdicts he could at least win a reduction in the amount of money he owes her.

Last month, the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s argument that he was immune from damages in the current case because he was president at the time he defamed Carroll.

The appeals court ruled that Trump had waived the potential defense of presidential immunity for not raising it for years after Carroll first sued him in 2019.

Trump last year posted $5.6 million as security while he appeals the verdict in the prior sex abuse and defamation case.

When he appeals the current case’s verdict, he will likely have to post more than $90 million in security.

Until the appeals are resolved, Carroll will not collect any money from Trump.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is not related to Roberta, told jurors before dismissing them from court: “My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury, and I won’t say anything more about it.”

Before their deliberations began, Judge Kaplan instructed them that they had to accept as facts that Trump “sexually assaulted” Carroll in the mid-1990s and defamed the writer in 2019.

“What remains for you to decide,” the judge said, is whether “Mr. Trump acted maliciously when he made his two statements” about Carroll.

“You must accept as true the facts as I explained to you as they have already been decided,” the judge said, referring to Trump’s sexual assault of Carroll and his slandering of her decades later.

Trump looked on during the instructions with a frown.

Earlier, Trump stalked out of the courtroom after Carroll’s lawyer began her closing argument, in which she urged jurors to award monetary damages “large enough that it will finally make him stop” slandering the writer.

Trump’s dramatic departure came minutes after the judge warned his lawyer Alina Habba that she was risking being tossed into jail before summations began in the case.

“The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom,” the judge said.

Trump returned about an hour later, after Carroll’s attorney finished her summation and just before his attorney began her closing argument.

Carroll in a 2019 New York magazine article wrote that in the mid-1990s, Trump had raped her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue, just up the street from the Trump Tower, where he lived and worked.

Trump denied her allegation at the time, saying she had made it up.

Another Manhattan federal court jury last year found he had sexually abused Carroll in the attack and had defamed her in statements he made in late 2022 denying her claims.

Kaplan ruled later in 2023 that that jury’s verdict meant that jurors in the current trial would have to accept as legally established that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll and had defamed her in his 2022 statements.

Trump on Friday posted several social media messages attacking Kaplan for rulings in the case, accusing the judge of having “absolute hatred of Donald J. Trump (ME!).” Trump’s Truth social account posted 14 times about Carroll when he was in the courtroom.

In her closing argument, Carroll’s lawyer Kaplan asked jurors to impose punitive damages on Trump for refusing to stop defaming Carroll even after a jury last year held him liable for doing so and ordered him to pay her $5 million.

Trump’s comments have sparked death threats and vicious emails and tweets directed at Carroll, the lawyer said.

“The dollar amount has to be very large,” Roberta Kaplan said. “It is at least as much and probably much more than the $12 million” that the lawyer noted an expert witness had testified it could cost to repair Carroll’s reputation after Trump accused her of inventing her claim.

“Last trial, Donald J. Trump didn’t even bother to show up, but this trial where it is about damages he has been sure to be here and the one thing he cares about his money,” Kaplan said.

Trump “is worth billions of dollars, he said that under oath, he could pay a million dollars a day for 10 years and still have money in the bank,” Kaplan said.

“When you begin deliberations I encourage you to step back and think of bigger picture, a former president of the United States who sexually assaulted, defamed and continues to defame.”

Earlier, Trump’s lawyer Habba, who had already irked Judge Kaplan for showing up late in court, angered him when she persisted in arguing that defense lawyers should be able to show a slide to jurors during their summation that represented some tweets related to Carroll.

“You are not going to use a slide to represent how many tweets there were, you are not using that slide, period,” Judge Kaplan said.

When Habba said, “I need to make a record,” referring to putting her argument on the record, the judge issued his warning.

“You are on the verge of spending time in the lockup, now sit down!” the judge told Habba.

Kaplan snapped at Habba several more times during her closing argument, at one point telling her that if she continued pressing a particular point “there will be consequences.”

In her summation, Habba said that Carroll “has failed to show she is entitled to any damages at all.”

“It is Ms. Carroll’s burden, not President Trump’s, to prove that his statements caused harm, and she failed to meet that burden, it is common sense,” Habba said.

The attorney also suggested that Carroll had made up her claims of receiving “thousands of threats.”

Carroll had testified that she deleted most of those threats, making them unavailable as evidence.

“Either Ms. Carroll is lying to you and those messages never existed in the first place or she deleted them and wants you to rely on them, and guess what, they are not here, and she has to give them to you to support her claim for damages, and that is a fact,” Habba said.

Habba also said that not only did Carroll “not suffer any emotional harm” after publishing her claim in 2019 about Trump raping her, “she was happier than ever.”

“She told Vanity Fair [magazine] that the support she received walking down the streets was heartwarming,” Habba said. “One of the most carefree and happy times of her life, that she was in a cocoon of love … does this sound like someone whose world has come crashing down, who can’t sleep?”

“She was enjoying the newfound attention she was receiving,” the lawyer said.

Before the arguments began and jurors entered the courtroom, the judge issued a warning.

“During closing arguments, no one is to say anything other than opposing counsel,” said Kaplan. “There are to be no interruptions or audible comments by anyone else and that will apply when I charge the jury and that will apply to counsel then as well.”

Carroll’s lawyers have complained during the trial about Trump making comments that were audible to jurors while sitting with his attorneys at the defense table.

Kaplan previously ruled that because of the prior verdict, there was no legal question that Trump defamed Carroll. That ruling left only the question of monetary damages remaining for the jury.

Trump during his very brief testimony in the trial Thursday said of Carroll’s claim, “I consider it a false accusation.”

Kaplan struck that testimony, in light of the prior jury’s verdict which found he had sexually abused Carroll.

Trump earlier this week defeated former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire. Last week, he won the Iowa GOP caucuses.