A lawyer for Donald Trump asked a federal appeals court on Friday to overturn a $5 million jury verdict finding Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her nearly three decades ago.
The Republican presidential nominee attended arguments before a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan. All three judges were appointed to the bench by Democratic presidents.
Trump is appealing a May 2023 civil verdict stemming from his alleged mid-1990s encounter with Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan, and an Oct. 2022 Truth Social post where he called Carroll’s claim a hoax.
Jurors awarded the former Elle magazine advice columnist a respective $2.02 million and $2.98 million for her sexual assault and defamation claims.
A different jury ordered Trump in January to pay Carroll $83.3 million for having defamed her and damaging her reputation in June 2019 after she first accused him of rape.
In both denials, Trump said he didn’t know Carroll, that she was “not my type,” and that she made up her story to promote her memoir. Trump is separately appealing the $83.3 million verdict.
Much of Friday’s arguments turned on whether U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, who oversaw both trials, erred in admitting testimony from other women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct occurring decades ago.
“This case is a textbook example of implausible allegations being propped up by highly inflammatory, inadmissible propensity evidence,” said Trump’s lawyer John Sauer.
He also called the case “a quintessential he said, she said case” brought by a woman with a political motive to hurt Trump, and funded by Trump’s enemies.
Trump criticized Kaplan’s admission of testimony from two accusers, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff.
Leeds said Trump groped her on a plane in the late 1970s, while Stoynoff said he forcibly kissed her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.
Trump also objected to letting jurors see a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video where he graphically described how famous people like himself could have sexual relations with beautiful women.
He said Kaplan also wrongly excluded evidence that Carroll was politically motivated to sue, and lied in a deposition regarding how a fellow Democrat, billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, was funding her case.
Though the first jury stopped short of finding that Trump raped Carroll, Kaplan said its verdict made Trump’s June 2019 denial defamatory, leading to the $83.3 million verdict.
Carroll’s cases are separate from multiple criminal cases against the former U.S. president.
Trump has yet to be sentenced in Manhattan state court in a hush money case, after being convicted in May of falsifying business records to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.
(Reuters)