E. Jean Carroll defamation case: Judge denies Trump's motion for mistrial
A jury ordered Donald Trump to pay Carroll $83 million for defaming her.
Former President Donald Trump, at the end of a five-day trial, has been ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages to former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll for defaming her in 2019 when he denied her allegations of sexual abuse.
Last year, in a separate trial, a jury determined that Trump was liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, and that he defamed her in a 2022 social media post by calling her allegations "a Hoax and a lie" and saying "This woman is not my type!"
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and has said he doesn't know who Carroll is.
Top headlines:
- Jury awards Carroll $83.3 million in damages
- Trump walks out during plaintiff's closing statement
- Trump testifies he denied allegations to defend himself
- Repairing Carroll's reputation would cost $12M, says expert
- 'I would love it,' Trump says to judge's threat to toss him
- Trump 'ended the world that I had been living in,' Carroll says
- 'This is not a do-over,' judge instructs jury
Carroll, following decision, hugs her attorneys
After the decision was announced, E. Jean Carroll and her lawyers locked hands as they stood for the jury to exit, and multiple jurors appeared to nod toward them as they left the courtroom for the final time.
Carroll and her lawyers immediately broke into a group hug as soon as Kaplan dismissed the parties.
Trump's defense team promptly exited the courtroom once they were dismissed, and his attorney Alina Habba thanked the court's staff for their service.
Shortly after Judge Kaplan's deputy read the verdict, the judge thanked the jury for their service and offered them a suggestion about interacting with the media.
"My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury, and I won't say anything more about it," Kaplan told the jury.
Trump says he plans to appeal
Writing on his social media platform, former President Trump called the $83 million decision "Absolutely ridiculous!" and said he will appeal.
The former president was not in the courtroom when the decision was announced.
Jury awards Carroll $83.3 million in damages
Former President Donald Trump must pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in a department store in the 1990s.
The jury determined that Trump must pay $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages.
Carroll had sought at least $12 million for reputation repair, plus additional compensatory and punitive damages.
A separate jury last year found Trump liable for sexually assaulting then defaming Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages.
The current jury of nine New Yorkers -- including a former schoolteacher, a transit worker, and a property manager -- rendered a verdict after deliberating for just under three hours.
Jury reaches verdict
The jury in former President Donald Trump's defamation damages case has reached a verdict.
The judge has called the parties back into the courtroom to hear the verdict read.
The jury will announce whether they have found E. Jean Carroll suffered damages as a result of Trump's statements, and, if so, how much they award Carroll in both compensatory and punitive damages.
Cross-examination of Carroll to resume
E. Jean Carroll will return to the witness stand this morning to resume her cross-examination -- this time without Donald Trump in the courtroom.
After attending the first two days of the trial, Trump will be absent today to attend the funeral of former first lady Melania Trump's mother, Amalija Knavs, who died last week after a long health battle.
During yesterday's proceedings, Judge Lewis Kaplan, for a third time, denied a request from Trump's legal team to pause the trial so Trump could attend the funeral.
"We would have assumed that for a trial like this, it's not an emergency in terms of timing, the judge would have been very nice, and they would let me go because I want to be at every trial day," Trump told reporters after court yesterday, calling Kaplan a "radical Trump hater."
Trump's attorney Alina Habba told Judge Kaplan she intends to question Carroll for less than an hour today, after which Carroll's lawyers plan to call to the stand an expert on reputational harm, as well as Robbie Myers, the former editor of the magazine where Carroll worked as an advice columnist.