Trump Ordered to Pay $83.3 Million to E. Jean Carroll for Defamation

A federal jury on Friday ordered Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll for defaming her, following a weeklong trial in which Carroll testified that Trump destroyed her reputation in the years since she accused him of sexual assault. The jury awarded Carroll $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages.

It took just under three hours for the jury to decide the judgement against Trump, who stormed out of the Manhattan federal courthouse earlier that same day during closing arguments. The former president was in his motorcade headed to LaGuardia airport when the judgement against him was rendered. On his way to Las Vegas for a campaign rally, he railed against the result on his social-media site Truth Social, calling it “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,” he said.

Notably, Trump did not mention Carroll by name after being punished for doing so, following days of sharing endless posts about her on social media with the intent of ruining her credibility.

Carroll and her attorneys didn’t answer any questions shouted by reporters as they left the courthouse, but she could be seen smiling. She later said in the statement that, “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.”

Her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said the 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,” she continued. “Standing up to a bully takes courage and bravery; it takes someone like E. Jean Carroll. We thank the jury for standing up for E. Jean and the rule of law.”

During a CNN interview, Kaplan also said she believed Trump storming out of the courtroom on Friday “hurt him terribly” with the jury:

I mean, our whole case is about the fact that Donald Trump is unable to follow the law, unable to follow the rules, he thinks they don’t apply to him. As bad as what he did to E. Jean Carroll was — and the sexual assault was terrible — and as horrifying as the defamation was back in 2019, the most amazing, shocking part of it all is that he kept on doing it, and he kept on doing it even during the trial. What other person thinks they can just openly break the law, over and over and over again?

Asked if she would file another lawsuit against Trump if he continued to defame Carroll, Kaplan replied, “I’m too good of a lawyer to tell you that — but everything’s on the table.”

After she left court, Trump’s lead attorney, Alina Habba, criticized the case and the process that led to this result.

“I am so proud to stand with President Trump. But I am not proud to stand up with whatever happened in that courtroom,” she said.

During closing arguments on Friday, Carroll’s lawyer, Kaplan, urged the jury to seek at least $24 million in compensatory damages, citing Trump’s massive wealth and suggesting that a significant financial penalty might be the only thing to stop the former president from further defaming her client.

“While Donald Trump may not care about the law, he certainly does not care about the truth — he does care about money,” Kaplan said, per CNN. “As a result, your decision to award a large amount of punitive damages may be the only hope that Ms. Carroll has to ever be free from Donald Trump’s relentless attacks ever again.”

Habba argued that Trump was ultimately not responsible for any hate or threats that Carroll received online after he denied her allegation. “President Trump should not have to pay for their threats. He does not condone them. All he did was tell his truth,” she said, according to NBC News.

On Thursday, Trump testified under strict conditions set forth by Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation to Carroll’s attorney), lasting barely three minutes on the stand before he left the courtroom, repeating, “This is not America”

After Friday’s decision, Judge Kaplan gave a final warning to the jury, which has remained anonymous throughout this process due to the high-profile nature of the case.

“My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury,” he said, according to Politico.

In 2019, Carroll made her allegations against Trump public for the first time in a excerpt of her book published by New York. He immediately claimed he had never met the former Elle columnist before and that she had made up her story because she wanted to damage him politically and profit financially off the attention for her book. Carroll subsequently sued Trump for defamation, alleging that his statements destroyed her reputation and harmed her professionally. In May, a jury sided with Carroll, finding Trump was liable for both sexual assault and defamation, awarding her $5 million in damages.

Friday’s judgment comes in the middle of a hectic legal calendar for Trump. A state judge is expected next week to determine the financial penalty against Trump in New York attorney general Letitia James’s civil fraud case against him. Meanwhile, Trump is awaiting decisions by a federal appeals court over the January 6–related criminal trial and the Supreme Court over his eligibility to run for president again following challenges made under the 14th Amendment.