A federal judge upheld the verdict Thursday and reward of more than 83 million dollars to writer E Jean Carroll in a defamation case against Donald Trump after she called him a liar for accusing him of sexually assaulting her.
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Judge Lewis Kaplan, senior district judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, denied Trump’s motion for a new trial and said Carroll suffered harm from Trump’s public statements in 2019.
“Mr. Trump’s argument is completely without merit, both in law and in fact,” Kaplan wrote in his notice released Thursday.
Carroll, a journalist and advice columnist, first sued Trump in 2019 for sexually assaulting her in the dressing room of a New York department store in early 1996. the jury awarded him $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages last year.
Less than a year later, Carroll wins another defamation suit against the former president after accusing her of lying about sexual abuse and participating in a political operation. She filed a lawsuit against these denials in 2019, claiming they ruined her reputation.
“I have never met this person in my life. She’s trying to sell a new book – that should indicate her motivation,” Trump written at the time. “It should be sold in the fiction section.”
In January, a New York City jury awarded Carroll $18.3 million in compensatory damages, $65 million in punitive retaliation, and compensatory damages of $18.3 million to $11 million. dollars to fund a reputation repair campaign paid for by Trump.
Amid financial woes, a judge approved Trump’s $92 million bond in Carroll’s case, shielding the former president from any efforts to secure judgment while he appeals the verdict.
This week’s events come just as the former president faces his first criminal trial in the series of indictments against him.
Manhattan court to decide whether Trump’s efforts to cover up alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Danielswhich he feared would harm his candidacy for the White House, were unlawful.
