NEW YORK –
Veering from the campaign trail to court, Donald Trump watched Friday as one of his lawyers fought to overturn a verdict finding the former president liable for sexual abuse and slander.
Trump walked into a federal appeals court quietly and passed right in front of his accuser, writer E. Jean Carroll, who was already seated at her table. He did not acknowledge her or look at her.
Attorney D. John Sauer told 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 the jury was allowed to consider such items as the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted years ago about grabbing women’s genitals.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said 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.
“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.
The three-judge panel didn’t immediately rule on Trump’s appeal of a jury’s finding that he sexually abused Carroll. Trump denies it. That jury awarded Carroll US$5 million.
Trump’s lawyers say the jury’s verdict should be tossed because evidence was allowed at trial that should have been excluded and other evidence was excluded that should have been permitted.
Trump did not attend the 2023 trial and has expressed regret he was not there.
The court is unlikely to issue a ruling before November’s presidential election.
The civil case has both political and financial implications for Trump.
Vice-President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has jabbed at Trump over the jury’s verdict, noting repeatedly that he had been found liable for sexual abuse.
And last January, a second jury awarded Carroll another US$83.3 million in damages for comments Trump had made about her while he was president, finding that they were defamatory. That jury had been instructed by the judge that it had to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll. The second trial was largely held to determine how badly Carroll had been harmed by Trump’s comments and how severely he should be punished.
Trump, 77, testified less than three minutes at the trial and was not permitted to refute conclusions reached by the May 2023 jury. Still, he was animated in the courtroom throughout the two-week trial, and jurors could hear him grumbling about the case.
The appeal of that trial’s outcome, which Trump labelled “absolutely ridiculous!” immediately afterward, will be heard by the appeals court at a later date.
Carroll, 80, testified during both trials that her life as an Elle magazine columnist was spoiled by Trump’s public comments, which she said ignited such hate against her that she received death threats and feared going outside the upstate New York cabin where she lives.
Lawyers for Trump said in court papers that he deserves a new trial in part because the trial judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, permitted two other women to testify about similar acts of sex abuse they say Trump committed against them in the 1970s and in 2005.
They also argued that Kaplan wrongly disallowed evidence that Carroll lied during her deposition, and other evidence they say would reveal bias and motives to lie for Carroll and other witnesses against Trump. The verdict, they wrote, was “unjust and erroneous,” resulting from “flawed and prejudicial evidentiary rulings.”
The judge is no relation to Carroll’s attorney.
Trump has insisted that Carroll made up the story about being attacked to sell a new book. He has denied knowing her.
Trump’s lawyers also challenged the repeated airing at trial of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” videotape, in which Trump is heard saying that he sometimes just starts kissing beautiful women and “when you’re a star they let you do it.” He also said that a star can grab women’s genitals because “you can do anything.”
In their written arguments, Carroll’s lawyers said Trump was wrongly demanding “a do-over” based on unfounded “sweeping complaints of unfairness” and other “distortions of the record, misstatements or misapplications of the law, and a steadfast disregard of the district court’s reasoning.”
“There was no error here, let alone a violation of Trump’s substantial rights. This Court should affirm,” Carroll’s lawyers said.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.
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Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.