A jury has awarded $83.3 million in additional damages to advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who argued that Donald Trump damaged her reputation by calling her a liar after she accused him of sexual assault. The verdict was delivered by a seven-man, two-woman jury after about three hours of deliberations. Another jury last May found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in 1996 and ordered him to pay $5 million, the AP reports. This defamation trial concerned statements Trump made about Carroll while he was president. As the verdict was read late Friday afternoon, Carroll smiled, then hugged her attorneys, per the New York Times. By then, Trump had left the building in his motorcade.
In deciding that Trump had acted maliciously in making statements about Carroll, the jury settled on $65 million in punitive damages and $18.3 million in compensatory damages. One of Carroll's lawyers, Roberta Kaplan, had asked jurors to award $24 million in compensatory damages and much more in punitive damages. Trump's attorney, Alina Habba, said Trump told the truth when he rebutted her claims. She said that Carroll's association with Trump had given her the fame she craved and that death threats she received cannot be blamed on Trump's remarks, per the AP.
Trump said he'll appeal. "Absolutely ridiculous!" he said of the verdict in a Truth Social post. "Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon." Judge Lewis Kaplan, who had taken steps to conceal the jurors' identities for their safety, told them they're now free to speak publicly about the case, per the Washington Post, though he doesn't suggest it. "My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury and I won't say anything more about it," he said. When the verdict sheet was given to the judge, he looked at it and asked the foreperson for clarity, "What does the 'M' mean?" per CNN. "Million," was the answer. (More Donald Trump stories.)
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