Trump’s lawyer plans to appeal E. Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit verdict.

Former President Trump to Appeal Verdict in E. Jean Carroll Trial

Joseph Tacopina, attorney of former President Donald Trump, has announced that the former president plans to appeal the verdict that found him liable for battery and defamation charges in the E. Jean Carroll trial. The verdict came after a Manhattan grand jury ruled against Trump on one count of defamation and one count of battery in a civil case launched against him by Carroll, an advice columnist.

The Verdict and Its Consequences

The verdict will not result in jail time because it is a civil case. The jury found that Trump should pay a total of about $5 million in damages to Carroll, including about $3 million for the defamation charge and about $2 million for the civil battery charge. Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Clinton appointee who oversaw the trial, announced the verdict after a 9-member jury panel deliberated on the case’s merit for less than three hours.

It concluded a one-week-long civil trial in the Southern District Court of New York, in which Carroll, 79, claims Trump, 76, raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996—committing a battery offense—and, in his denial of the incident, committed libel, a type of defamation in written words.

Trump’s denial of the incident, Carroll’s attorney alleged during the trial, hurt Carroll’s career prospects as a journalist and a writer.

The Standards of Proof

Because the case was brought in civil court, Carroll was required to establish her battery claim by “a preponderance of the evidence”—a legal standard meaning more likely than not—and establish “clear and convincing evidence” for her libel claim. Both standards here are lower than the “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” requirement to establish a guilty verdict in criminal cases.

Jurors were tasked with deciding whether Trump raped, sexually abused, or forcibly touched Carroll, any one of which would satisfy her claim of battery. They found that Carroll did not prove that Trump raped her but instead found that Trump sexually abused her. They also found that Trump defamed Carroll.

Tacopina’s Response

“Strange verdict,” Tacopina told reporters outside the courthouse. “It was a rape case all along, and the jury rejected that.”

“We’ll obviously be appealing those other findings,” Tacopina said, referring to the defamation and battery counts.

The Allegations and the Lawsuit

At the time of the alleged offense, she did not report the incident to authorities for fear of backlash from Trump and his supporters, Carroll said during the trial. Tacopina, however, said during closing arguments that the reason Carroll didn’t call the police was that the allegation “would never make it through a police investigation in a million years.”

Carroll’s lawsuit traces back to 2019 when the writer accused then-President Trump of sexually assaulting her in the mid-1990s. After Trump denied Carroll’s allegations in 2019—saying that “she’s not my type”—Carroll filed a lawsuit accusing Trump of defaming her in the same year, citing those words. That lawsuit bounced around state, federal, and appellate courts in New York and Washington, D.C., without material consequences.

In 2022, the New York state legislature passed the Adult Survivor Act, which amended state law to give victims of certain sexual offenses a one-year window, beginning on Nov. 24, 2023, to file a civil lawsuit against alleged offenders. Carroll filed a second lawsuit on Nov. 24, 2022, under this Act, which went to trial and resulted in Tuesday’s verdict.

Trump’s Response

Trump has, until the present day, denied all of Carroll’s allegations.

“I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace – a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the verdict came out on Tuesday.

“The Democratic Party’s never-ending witch-hunt of President Trump hit a new low today. In jurisdictions wholly controlled by the Democratic Party our nation’s justice system is now compromised by extremist left-wing politics. We have allowed false and totally made-up claims from troubled individuals to interfere with our elections, doing great damage,” a Trump campaign spokesperson told The Epoch Times in a statement on Tuesday, referring to Carroll’s case.

“Make no mistake, this entire bogus case is a political endeavor targeting President Trump because he is now an overwhelming front-runner to be once again elected President of the United States,” the spokesperson wrote.

The Credibility Question

A central question to the case is whether Carroll’s claim that Trump had sexually assaulted her is credible.

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