Eight times more than ordered. Donald Trump was sentenced this Friday by a federal jury to pay $83.3 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll, who accused the former President of the United States of destroying her reputation as a journalist by denying that she had been married before the middle of the year In the 1990s, she was raped in a dressing room at a luxury department store in Manhattan.
Carroll, 80, sued Trump in November 2019 because he denied raping her five months earlier. The Republican favorite candidate for the presidential nomination was already convicted of sexually abusing a woman last May. The jury then imposed a fine of five million dollars.
In a post on his social network Truth Social, the Republican attacked the verdict and assured that an appeal would be lodged. With his usual all caps and exclamations, the re-election candidate wrote: “Absolutely ridiculous! I strongly disagree with both rulings and will be appealing the entire witch hunt [el presidente demócrata Joe] Biden and focused on me and the Republican Party. Our legal system is out of control and is being used as a political weapon. They have taken away all of our First Amendment rights. THIS IS NOT THE UNITED STATES.” The First Amendment to the US Constitution enshrines freedom of speech.
Trump, who appeared in court on Thursday and Friday, unexpectedly left the courtroom today as Carroll's lead attorney read her closing arguments. The confident former president, who was repeatedly admonished by the judge presiding over the case, Lewis Kaplan, displayed a more temperate and measured demeanor during the two hearings, shaken by the angry tone of his complaint in Truth Social. In all the trials he faces, the tycoon most often repeats the mantra of being the victim of a political witch hunt by his democratic enemies. Victimhood has given him good results, both in popularity and in campaign fundraising: after each accusation – and there are four – voting intention polls skyrocket, and the campaign coffers cannot stop collecting handouts get over. It was only in the Manhattan district attorney's first indictment last April in the so-called Stormy Daniels case (the payment of illegal money to silence an extramarital relationship with the porn actress) that Trump's campaign had its say
In the second round of this civil case, decided in federal court in Manhattan, the nine-member jury had to prove the Republican's repeated defamation of Carroll's allegations. The prosecution had asked for $10 million, an amount that a lawyer specializing in damages increased slightly to $12. The jury's decision surprised everyone due to the high amount of compensation, which is divided into several chapters. Trump must pay Carroll $18.3 million in damages: $11 million to fund a campaign to restore his reputation and $7.3 million for emotional harm caused by Trump's public statements in 2019 was caused shortly after the woman accused him of raping her in the locker room, Trump said, to better publicize sales of an autobiographical book.
Trump should also pay $65 million in punitive damages because he acted with malice in making statements about Carroll, according to the decision of the jury, whose identities were fully preserved to the extent that none of them knew the real truth of his actions. The judge presiding over the case, Lewis Kaplan, thanked his members for their work after reading the verdict, while also lifting the silence order for the deliberations on the condition that the identities of his colleagues not be revealed. “However, my advice is that they never reveal that they were part of the jury. I will say no more on this matter,” Kaplan said, quoted by CNN. The day before, an old friend of Carroll's, testifying at the defense's request, highlighted the climate of political tension in the country as a complicating factor in her testimony.
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Last May, a separate federal jury in Manhattan awarded Carroll a total of $5 million in damages – including $3 million for defamation – after proving that Trump sexually abused Carroll and then defamed her in 2022, to the extreme She had denigrated that she was “mentally ill” and again denied the allegations.
The candidate for re-election in November faces a complicated judicial landscape. In addition to the four charges against him, there are two civil cases, both in New York, this one for defamation and another for fraud in his family's businesses, totaling 91 charges. However, the justice front has not tempered its political expectations, as demonstrated by its recent and consecutive victories in the Iowa and New Hampshire elections.
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