President-elect Donald Trump is not entitled to a new trial in the case in which a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The court roundly rejected claims by Trump and his lawyers that the judge who presided over the trial made a series of decisions that harmed Trump’s standing with the jury.
Trump asked for a new trial after a jury unanimously concluded in May 2023 that a preponderance of evidence supported Carroll’s claim that Trump sexually abused her during a mid-1990s encounter in a New York City department store. Monday’s 77-page decision rejected complaints made repeatedly by Trump before, during and after the nine-day trial.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, based in New York, found that District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan did not err in allowing the testimonies of two women who made claims on the stand of alleged encounters with Trump that bore similarities to Carroll’s.
“With his shoulder and the whole weight of his body against her, Mr. Trump held her against the wall, kissed her, pulled down her tights, and stuck his fingers into her vagina — until Ms. Carroll managed to get a knee up and push him back off of her,” the appeals court wrote, summarizing evidence and testimony of Carroll’s claim.
Carroll said she and Trump bumped into each other by chance while shopping at Bergdorf Goodman. What started as a pleasant walk through the store — her helping him choose a present for another woman, as they engaged in jocular banter — turned violent in a changing room, she alleged.
Trump has vehemently denied Carroll’s allegations, and vowed to appeal the case as far as the Supreme Court. He has also appealed a January 2024 trial ruling that found him liable for more defamation against Carroll. That appeal is still pending. The juries in the two cases combined awarded Carroll more than $88 million.
Attorneys for Trump did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, thanked the appeals court for “its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments,” in a statement to CBS News.
“Both E. Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today’s decision,” said Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge.
Among Trump’s complaints about the trial was that the jurors were shown an outtake from “Access Hollywood,” in which Trump could be heard describing grabbing women’s genitals. The clip was widely shared during the 2016 presidential race. The court found that Lewis Kaplan did not err in allowing that video to be shown.
Carroll’s federal civil lawsuit made claims of rape, sexual abuse and defamation as defined by New York’s penal code. The jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, but rejected the rape claim, which under New York’s statute requires proof of forceful penetration involving the attacker’s genitals.
The judge later wrote that New York’s penal code is out of touch with federal standards and a “modern” understanding of what rape is. In post-trial rulings he wrote that Carroll’s assertion that Trump raped her was “substantially true.”
“The definition of rape in the New York Penal Law is far narrower than the meaning of ‘rape’ in common modern parlance, its definition in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere,” Lewis Kaplan wrote in July 2023
The jury “implicitly found Mr. Trump did in fact digitally rape Ms. Carroll,” Lewis Kaplan wrote.
