WORLD NEWS FOR MONTENEGRO DIASPORA
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AUTHOR:M.J. GDNUS
A federal appeals court in the US today upheld a lower court's decision that Donald Trump is liable for the sexual assault of columnist I Jean Carroll, which he allegedly committed in the mid-1990s in a dressing room at a luxury department store.
The appeals court also upheld a Manhattan jury's decision that Trump - who was re-elected as US president on November 5 - must pay the victim $5 million in damages for defamation and sexual assault.
At Trump's 2023 trial, Carroll testified that their meeting in the spring of 1996 was supposed to be friendly, but turned into a physical assault after they entered the dressing room in a joking manner.
Trump has avoided appearing in court after repeatedly denying the assault ever happened. However, he did give a brief statement this year in a defamation trial that cost him $83.3 million in damages.
That trial stemmed from comments Trump made in 2019 — when he was first president — after Carroll first made the allegations against him in her memoir.
In the appeals decision, the three-judge panel rejected Trump’s lawyers’ arguments that trial judge Louis A. Kaplan made several decisions that undermined the trial, including allowing two more women who had accused Trump of sexual assault to appear as witnesses.
Judge Kaplan also allowed the jury to see the infamous “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump brags about grabbing women’s genitals in 2005 because “you can do whatever you want when you’re a star.”
“We conclude that Mr. Trump has not shown that the federal court erred in any of the appellate decisions. Moreover, despite the burden being on him, he has not shown that any alleged error or combination of alleged errors violated his fundamental rights to warrant a new trial,” the appellate judges wrote in their second-instance ruling.
Trump spokesman Stephen Chong said in a statement that Trump was elected by voters and given a “comprehensive mandate,” and that they are calling for an immediate end to the political weaponization of our judiciary and a swift end to any witch hunt, including the one funded by Democrats over the Carrol Hoax, which we will continue to appeal.”
Roberta Kaplan, attorney for Jean Carroll, who is not related to Judge Carroll, said she and her client were “pleased with today’s decision.”
A trial jury found in May 2023 that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and defamed her in comments he made in October 2022. As a result, Trump was ordered to pay $5 million in damages.
Then, in January of this year, a second jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages for Trump’s defamatory statements about her made in 2019 while he was first president. The judge instructed that jury to adopt the first jury’s finding that Trump sexually assaulted the columnist.
Trump testified for less than three minutes at the second trial, and was not allowed to challenge the first jury’s findings from May 2023. However, he was very vocal in his discontent throughout the two-week trial, and members of the second jury could be heard grumbling loudly about the proceedings against him.
