Veering from the campaign trail to a courtroom, Donald Trump quietly observed Friday as his lawyer fought to overturn a verdict finding the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
The Republican nominee and his accuser, E. Jean Carroll, a writer, sat at tables about 15 feet (4.5 meters) apart, in a Manhattan federal appeals court. Trump didn’t acknowledge or look at Carroll as he passed directly in front of her on the way in and out, but he sometimes shook his head, including when Carroll’s attorney said he sexually attacked her.
Trump attorney D. John Sauer told three 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges that the civil trial in Carroll’s lawsuit was muddied by improper evidence.
“This case is a textbook example of implausible allegations being propped up by highly inflammatory, inadmissible” evidence, Sauer said, noting that jurors saw the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted in 2005 about grabbing women’s genitals because when someone is a star, “you can do anything.”
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told judges the evidence in question was proper, and that there was plenty of proof in the nearly two-week-long trial of Carroll’s claim that Trump attacked her in a luxury department store dressing room decades ago. She said the “Access Hollywood” tape, as the trial judge had noted, could be viewed as a confession.
“E. Jean Carroll brought this case because Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1996, in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, and then defamed her in 2022 by claiming that she was crazy and made the whole thing up,” Kaplan said.
Carroll, standing with Kaplan outside the courthouse afterward, declined to comment.
Trump left court in a motorcade, then delivered a lengthy diatribe against the case at Trump Tower, where he said again that Carroll — and other women who had accused him of sexual assault — were making everything up.
“It’s so false. It’s a made up, fabricated story by somebody, I think, initially, just looking to promote a book,” Trump said. Carroll first spoke publicly about her encounter with Trump in a newly published memoir in 2019.
In remarks to reporters Friday, Trump repeated many claims about Carroll that a jury has already deemed defamatory, and added some new ones, like suggesting that a photograph of him and Carroll together in 1987 was produced by artificial intelligence. It was unclear whether his comments could lead to a new defamation lawsuit by Carroll.
“I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: all options are on the table,” Kaplan said after Trump’s news conference.
The three-judge panel, if it follows the pattern of other appeals, would be unlikely to rule for weeks, if not months.
A jury found in May 2023 that Trump sexually abused Carroll. He denies it. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million.
Trump did not attend the trial and has expressed regret that he was not there. The civil case has political and financial implications for Trump.
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