Appeals court upholds Carroll verdict
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Another reminder that the verdict was sound because it is overwhelmingly likely that Carroll was telling the truth:
A federal appeals court Monday upheld a $5 million New York civil trial jury verdict that found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan said that Trump did not demonstrate that the district court “erred in any of the challenged rulings.”
In May 2023, jurors determined that Carroll had sufficiently proved she was sexually abused in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s after a chance encounter with Trump. The jury also found that Trump defamed Carroll years later on social media, after she publicly accused him of rape.
The jury awarded Carroll a total of $5 million.
Trump appealed that decision, arguing that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan admitted evidence in trial that he should not have, including an “Access Hollywood” recording, first reported on by The Washington Post in 2016, in which Trump talks in graphic terms about grabbing women by their genitals. Trump’s team also argued that the judge wrongly allowed the jury to hear testimony from two women who alleged that Trump had sexually assaulted them.
The federal panel ruled Monday that the judge’s decision to allow the jury to hear that evidence was proper and that “the district court did not abuse its discretion in making any of the challenged evidentiary rulings.”
“The jury made its assessment of the facts and claims on a properly developed record,” the judges wrote in the ruling.
I’m so old I remember when consensual adultery among politicians was considered a serious scandal, and for a Democratic presidential candidate I’m guessing it still would be.