CNN
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A federal decide on Thursday upheld the verdict and award in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against former President Donald Trump and denied Trump’s movement for a brand new trial.
Decide Lewis Kaplan, in a written opinion, stated Trump’s authorized arguments are with out benefit. The decide additionally discovered that the punitive damages the jury awarded to Carroll “passes constitutional muster.”
Carroll, a former journal columnist, alleged Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman division retailer within the mid-Nineties after which defamed her when he denied her declare. In a separate case, a jury final yr discovered Trump responsible for the sexual assault.
The second case stems from remarks Trump had made denying Carroll’s allegations in 2019. He was discovered responsible for defamation final yr, and a jury earlier this yr ordered him to pay $83.3 million in punitive and compensatory damages.
Trump’s authorized group had argued that the damages awarded to Carroll within the defamation case had been extreme. Kaplan dismissed that argument in his opinion launched Thursday.
“Mr. Trump’s malicious and unceasing assaults on Ms. Carroll had been disseminated to greater than 100 million individuals,” Kaplan wrote. “They included public threats and private assaults, they usually endangered Ms. Carroll’s well being and security.”
“The jury,” Kaplan added, “was entitled to conclude that Mr. Trump derailed the profession, status, and emotional well-being of one among America’s most profitable and distinguished recommendation columnists and authors.”
Trump has maintained that he didn’t sexually assault Carroll, and in 2019, stated that Carroll was not his “kind.” These denials shaped the idea of the defamation lawsuit.
He sat in court docket for parts of the defamation trial, incomes rebukes from the decide after he was heard making feedback throughout Carroll’s testimony. As Carroll’s legal professionals delivered their closing arguments, Trump abruptly and dramatically stood up and left the courtroom.
Kaplan referenced that episode in his opinion: “Mere minutes after (Carroll’s) counsel started her closing argument, Mr. Trump conspicuously stood and walked out of the courtroom for no obvious purpose save to proof his disapproval.”
Apart from the eye-popping financial quantity, the judgment introduced one other level into stark readability: A jury of standard residents – not the politicians or their appointees that Trump always claims mistreat him – held him accountable.
The judgment comes as Trump sits in one other courtroom – this time, a felony one – awaiting one other jury of standard New Yorkers to determine his destiny on fees that he falsified enterprise data to cowl up an affair forward of the 2016 election.
This story has been up to date with extra reporting.