A federal court ratified, this Monday (30), the verdict of a jury that ordered the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, to pay US$5 million (R$30.9 million) in the case in which the republican is accused of sexual abuse and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the argument made by Trump’s team that the trial and verdict were unfair because the judge should not have allowed testimony from two women who said they were sexually abused by him.
A New York jury concluded in May last year after a nine-day trial that the president-elect sexually assaulted Carroll in a Manhattan store in 1996.
The incident occurred around 1996 in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan, where Carroll, now 81, said Trump raped her. The Republican leader says the accusations are nothing more than hoaxes.
A federal jury found Trump responsible for sexual abuse and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, but not for rape. Still, the judge overseeing the proceedings later said that because of New York’s narrow legal definition of rape, the jury’s verdict did not mean that Carroll had “failed to prove that Trump ‘raped’ her.”
The jury also decided that Trump must pay Carroll $5 million for damages, including $2 million for sexual assault and $3 million for defamation.
The Republican appealed the decision, arguing that the testimonies of two women who claimed to have suffered sexual abuse by him were invalid.
However, the panel of judges disagreed. “We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged decisions.”
The court said the evidence, including Trump bragging about his sexual prowess in an “Access Hollywood” video that emerged during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, established a “repeated and idiosyncratic pattern of conduct” consistent with Carroll’s allegations. .
“Furthermore, he failed to meet his obligation to demonstrate that any error or combination of errors claimed affected his fundamental rights, as required to justify a new trial.”
A different jury in June 2019 ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her and damaging her reputation. But the Republican appealed and managed to reduce the sentence.
Trump claims he did not know Carroll, that the woman was “not his type,” and that she fabricated the rape accusation to promote her memoir.
A columnist for fashion magazine Elle for 26 years, Carroll brought the case to light in 2019, when New York Magazine published an excerpt from her book. In her version, she casually met Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman store on Fifth Avenue in New York, and he allegedly pushed her against the wall and raped her in the store’s changing room.
At the time, Trump was a prominent real estate developer and she was a well-known journalist and television host.
Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesman, said in a statement that Americans “demand an immediate end to the politicization of our justice system and a swift rejection of all witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed.”
