NEW YORK – A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury’s ruling in a civil case in which Donald Trump sexually harassed a columnist in the dressing room of an upscale department store in the mid-1990s.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a written opinion upholding a $5 million award awarded by a Manhattan jury to E. Jean Carroll for defamation and sexual abuse.
The longtime magazine columnist testified at his 2023 trial that Trump turned a cordial meeting in the spring of 1996 into a brutal attack after they jokingly entered the store’s dressing room.
Trump skipped the trial after repeatedly denying the attack even took place. However, earlier this year he gave brief testimony in another defamation suit that resulted in an $83.3 million award. The second trial resulted from comments then-President Trump made in 2019, after Carroll first publicly made the accusations in a memoir.
In its ruling, the three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected claims by Trump’s lawyers that trial Judge Lewis A. Kaplan made multiple decisions that marred the trial, including allowing two other women who accused Trump of sexually abusing them to testify.
The judge also allowed the jury to watch the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged in 2005 about grabbing women by their genitals because when you’re a star, “you can do anything.”
“We conclude that Mr. Trump has failed to show that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the Second Circuit said. “Furthermore, he failed to meet his burden of showing that any alleged error or combination of alleged errors affected his substantial rights required to justify a new trial.”
In September, both Carroll, 81, and Trump, 78, attended arguments before the Second Circuit.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement that Trump was elected by voters who voted “overwhelmingly and demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll fraud, from which there will continue to be “appeal filed”.
Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer who represented Carroll during the trial and is not related to the judge, said in a statement: “Both E. Jean Carroll and I are satisfied with today’s decision. We thank the Second Circuit for carefully considering the parties’ arguments.”
The first grand jury found in May 2023 that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and defamed her with comments he made in October 2022. The grand jury awarded Carroll $5 million.
A second jury in January awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million damages for comments Trump made about her while he was president, finding them defamatory. The judge instructed that jury to accept the first grand jury’s finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll. An appeal against this judgment has not yet been heard.
During both trials, Carroll testified that her life as a columnist for Elle magazine was ruined by Trump’s public comments, which she believed motivated some people to send her death threats and made her fearful of leaving the upstate New York cottage where she lives.
During the second trial, Trump testified for less than three minutes and was not allowed to challenge the May 2023 jury’s conclusions. Still, he was animated in the courtroom throughout the two-week trial, and jurors heard him complaining about the case.
During the September appeals, Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, argued that testimony from witnesses who remembered Carroll telling them immediately afterward about his 1996 meeting with Trump was inappropriate because the witnesses had “gross bias” against Trump.
The lawyer said the judge should also have excluded testimony from two women who said Trump committed similar acts of sexual abuse against them in the 1970s and 2005. Trump also denied those allegations.
The 2nd Circuit wrote: “During each of the three meetings, Mr. Trump engaged in casual conversation with a woman he barely knew and then suddenly lunged at her in a semi-public place, kissed her and forcefully touched her without her consent.” The actions are similar enough that a pattern can be discerned.”
It said the “Access Hollywood” tape “directly corroborates” the women’s testimony about the patterns of behavior they experienced.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll did.
